fed up with my digicam

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It's old. It's a Nikon Coolpix 3200 and it has a hard time focusing on things even in a brightly lit room though the room is lit with a fluorescent overhead light.

I need a camera with good depth of field that can focus on all the things in the foreground as well as the background and to be able to focus on things in low lighting conditions as well as bright conditions.

Well, with a point and shoot camera like you have, for taking general snap shots, pretty much any camera should be able to do that. The only problem you will have is with low lighting conditions. I would go with something from Nikon or Canon.
If you want to have creative control over your pictures and want to take good quality photographs, not just snap shots, then a SLR is what you would want, although more expensive, would do everything you want and way more. Currently on Newegg.com the cheapest digital SLR is $489, but on other websites you could get a older model for much cheaper, like in the $250-300 range. Even a cheap well used SLR will take way better pictures then any new point & shoot. If you go with a point and shoot, like I said anything from Canon or Nikon would be good. Don't listen to everyone that will tell you "buy the highest megapixel camera", or "buy the highest zoom", as they probably don't have a clue about cameras.

Yeah, Canon or Nikon's are your best bet, although some of the Sony's and Panasonics are ok.

I have an old Canon A75 3 Mp P&S, and it took excellent pictures until the image sensor went out the other day (they had a recall on those a few years ago that I didn't know about, so I'm out of luck), so I'm using a borrowed A480 for the time being. Let me tell you, the A75 is built better and took pictures that are as good as the newer, and higher megapixel models.

I'm looking at getting one of the new Canon Powershot SX200 IS models when the price comes down a bit. The quality and asthetics on these seems to be better than previous models, although I still hate how they shrunk the hand grip to make it more compact...I have big hands, and these things are hard to hold onto, without a strap or grip.

every so often, I'll be driving along and I'll be foggy out and I'll see light in the fog and the effect is really cool. Cool enough to want to catch the effect on camera. This effect I probably don't need to tell you is visible only at night and a flash would probably ruin the effect. Are there digital cameras out there that have a feature where you can hold the shutter open for longer periods of time (is that called f-stop?) to get more of the ambient light of the light in the fog so it'll come out clearly?

And is there a way to use the same frame I just took a picture on? For example: If I wanted to catch all three light rays of a traffic light without overexposing the frame, could I f-stop it on red, wait for yellow, f-stop it again and then wait for green and f-stop it one last time. Reason I'm waiting for green is because green's the brightest of the three.

Any of this making any sense?

I'm guessing I'm going to be SOL because digicams don't have the cable necessary to do the manual shutter hold and I'll have to go with the old 35mm.

Lumix DMC-LZ8
It arrived a couple of days ago and I love it. Has a dedicated button for manual adjust:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08012 ... z8lz10.asp

For overexposing, you could do a hack: Use a long time and put cover the lens between changes (:

pretty! How much?

Buy new: $149.95 now $119.95
http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-DMC-LZ8 ... 851&sr=8-1

For the fog, I am guessing your camera does not have some sort of night mode for pics like this, only some cameras will have this to make it easy, but you would get better results taking the pic maual.
Pretty much all digital cameras have some sort of manual mode, including the one you own now. For the fog photo, you will need a tripod, this is mandatory for a low light shot, because you cant hold the camera still long enough. You go to your manual mode and set the shutter speed, on most cameras this is "Tv" for time value. This is the seting that determins how long the shutter is open, it is in seconds or fractions of seconds. Where one of the problem comes in with a point and shoot camera like you have, is that the sensitivity (known as ISO) would not be good enough for a great shot like this, so it will probably end up being very grainy. The f-stop is totaly differnt from what your thinking, this on the camera is known as "Av" or aperature value, this is the size of the aperature, or the holl that lets light pass threw to the sensor. Aperature is mesured in f-stop, the higher the number, the smaller the aperature, the smaller the number the larger the aperature. If you follow me so far you are doing good, lol.
So for the fog, tripod, manual mode (or if there is a Tv mode use that), set for like 1 second to start, turn ISO probably way up, then if the f-stop does not set automaticly for you then good luck as then it gets way more complicated.
Anyway, if you are trying to do these type of photos with a point & shoot, at the best your photos are not going to look very good. Like I said in my previous post, you really need a SLR for these type of pictures to turn out good. Eather a digital slr or film slr.
A point & shoot is best for taking snap shots in ideal photo conditions, they are not the best for taking a high quality photograph.

BTW, a "hack" is not needed, and overexposing is when the shutter is open to long.....