They are both good camera brands.

For what you want to do I suggest a MINIMUM of a 4 megapixel camera and a high OPTICAL zoom. You would probably be best served with a minimum of a 6X optical. When you zoom in OPTICALY, the number of megapixels remains the same. All the digital zoom does is crop the picture (read this as pixels) while it is in the camera - it is not "getting you closer " to what you are photographing. The number of pixels in a digital zoom are less than an optical zoom and clarity frequently suffers in enlargements.