Recommend Books to Help with Power Shot

[Angelaine]

A friend of mine just received a Canon PowerShot A560 for her birthday. She is overwhelmed with the literature that came with the camera. Could you recommend any Dummies books or other books that could simplify taking digital pictures with this camera? Thank you so much!

Sincerely,
Angelaine

[Jon]

Canon has some on-line resources here (http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=MultiMiscPageAct&key=Learning_Station&fcategoryid=2533). They're largely geared toward DSLR users, but some will help the P&S new user as well. Since the A560 doesn't have the usual controls, there are large parts of "standard" photo tutorials that won't directly apply. She can't set aperture or shutter speed, for instance, but knowing the fundamentals of exposure will help her set Exposure Compensation for "odd" conditions. The Canon picture-taking modes aren't directly addressed in books either, but reading a section on, say, landscape photography while bearing in mind the various available preset modes can help. Composition isn't going to be affected by the camera's features. She can certainly pay heed to that in any book she picks up.

The best thing for her to do is to just take a lot of pictures and use the different settings. Then go over them and see what works or doesn't. Since it's all digital, it doesn't cost anything but the electricity used to recharge the batteries (as it's an A560, and uses AA cells, she needs to get a set of NiMH AA cells - alkalines don't last as well in digital cameras).