Just bought my S400...now what?

[Nerd]

OK guys, I'm new to digital photography so please bear with me...

I just bought my S400, charged the battery, formatted the flash card in the camera, and started taking pictures.

I would appreaciate any tips on which default settings I should immediately adjust for optimum performance. For instance, my camera seems slower taking pics than the demo I played with in the store.

Any suggestions on tweaks I should make for the S400 fresh out the box?


Thanks!

[Matzzzy]

Experiment!!!
Take a lot of pictures, and then, take lots more :)
And do take time to go through the manual, there's a lot of helpful stuff in there, especially when you're new to photography.

.:Matz:.

[Tom W]

Yep - charge up the battery and take a ton of pics. Experiment with the ASA speed, slow shutter, the various flash modes. See the differences when you shoot the same scene under different circumstances and with different settings.

[Novell]

Nerd wrote:
I just bought my S400, charged the battery, formatted the flash card in the camera, and started taking pictures.

Just curious, are we supposed to format the flash card before using it, and why? I just plug mine in and start taking photos.

[Tom W]

You're not supposed to need to format, but occasionally, a preformatted CF card doesn't seem to want to work, so a precautionary formatting by the camera doesn't hurt. It doesn't take long either.

[acurtis]

Nerd

I agree with Matz and Tom. Just take loads of pictures. The instant feedback you get with digital and ability to play gives you a huge advantage over the old film camera days. I take about 6 shots of everything from all angles then sometimes throw away all 6. It's great; have fun and post pictures to this forum and look at everyone else's efforts. I too have an Ixus 400 (S400) and it's a great little beast. The only things I would recommend is to buy the biggest card you can afford (256 has plenty of space), always use the highest quality settings and get a spare battery.

Good luck

Andy

[CyberDyneSystems]

O-kay,. I got one of these as my portable... and was having a difficult time with it,. untill I figured out how to turn off the multizone autofocus which is poop!

Go to page 64-68 of your manual (can't remeber which) and read up on how to turn off the multizone Autofocus,. after that instead of random grean focus squares appearing over evrything in the viewfinder EXCEPT the one subject you are actually tryig to focus on,. you will get only one fixed focus square in the center of the viewfinder. It works a lot better.

[Tom W]

I also prefer the center-focus mode as opposed to AFiF or whatever its called. And set the camera to manual and 100 asa for most photos, except in very dim locations. The camera gets a little noisy at 200, though still acceptable. 400 is pretty noisy (grainy).

50 ASA is really clear, but it really cuts down on your flash distance and low-medium light performance (indoors).

Play around a little with ASA, as well as the different metering modes (there's 3). I haven't messed with white balance much yet, but that can be selected manually as well.

I snapped off about 40 pics with mine today, along with 12 with the Elan. I caught the holiday moments, or at least some of them (a little shutter lag on the P&S).

[S45_fornow...]

One thing that escapes most beginner's with the Canon P&S digicams is the ability to do a quick and painless focus lock (turn multi-zone focus off for best results). This allows you to get a focus on your subject and then recompose the image in your LCD/viewfinder. Look up how to do this in your manual. It's simple and I'm not going to tell you how to do it here because too many beginner's don't read the manual (it's loaded with good stuff, Maynard!).