NEW TO BOARD, S410/S500 ?'S...

[CdeSade]

Hello all,

I’m new to this board and I thought some of you could help me with this issue… I’m not sure whether to purchase the S410 or the S500.

I have owned both the S330 (2MP) and the S230 (3MP), so I know how to work the digital Elph.

The S410 let’s you take 1024x768 pics, but the S500 only let’s you take 1600x1200. Both of them let you take 800x600, but I don’t want to take those small pics. Anyways, with 1024x768 pics I can put a lot more on a CF card than with 1600x1200 pics… that’s basically what’s making this such a hard choice.

I’m going to Japan next autumn and would like to take lush pics, and may send some in to National Geographic.

Would 1024x768 (4MP) pics versus 1600x1200 (5MP) pics make a big difference in the final product? Or does it only REALLY matter when you take pics at the largest setting? I’ve never seen a difference between 1024x768 pics and 2592x1944 pics when they were both taken at the “super fine” setting... but then again, it was only with a 2MP and a 3MP camera. So you can why I’m getting confused.

I just REALLY want to take great pics in Japan… a few thousand ;) Any help you could offer me would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

[rsnadel]

With the cost of storage coming down so much recently, it seems to me that your decision should be based on something other than how many pictures you can record on a given card. Ideally, one would take all pictures at the camera's highest quality, so as not to create artificial limits when processing later. You could always spend $200 to buy an inexpensive storage device like the "Flash-HD to go!", or the NixVue, or FlashTrax, or one of the others in that PSD class that offer 20Gb to 40Gb of storage in a device not much bigger than a deck of cards. That way, you can shoot to your heart's content, transfer the pictures from the CF card to the storage device, and have a fresh CF card to fill-up again.

[CdeSade]

The S500 it is then!

Thanks for suggesting the "Flash-HD to go!". I've been looking for some sort of external harddrive like that. With that single suggestion you answered EVERYTHING. Thank you!