Newbee and the use of Canon S30

[cactusklaw]

I am trying to enter the twenty first century.I somewhat mastered the computer and the internet and decided to press on.I bought a canon digital camera and an adobe elements 2 image adjuster.After hours of of study of the manual I ventured forth.My photos appeares on the Zoom Browser but I could not distinquish its fucntion from the Adobe software.I had a great deal of difficulty mastering the set control to eliminate unwanted photos . Am I manually challenged?It appeared also to use up the battery after what appeared to be 20 shots and replays. Help? I want very much to use this new equipment with the easy of my old S.L.R. eqipement.My last question is should I buy a back up f lash card and if so with how much memory? Are all brands the same?Thank You for your interest.

[bigdave]

Well, Adobe Elements is superior for image editing. You'll find lots of filters and other cool stuff to tweak your photos. I use Photoshop 7, but I think many of the tools are the same. As for the set button, I had problems with that too. The trick is to use the tip of your thumb to push the button. That normally works for me.

The number of shots you can take depends greatly on what settings you use. If you used the LCD, zoomed in/out often, and used flash on each of the shots, i'ts quite possible to run down a battery that fast. Try to use the LCD as little as possible, this will improve your battery life significantly.

I use a 12x speed 128mb CF card made by PNY, but all the brands are pretty much the same. Definitely get another card besides the 16mb that comes in the box. Consider 64mb a minimum.

here's a link to Fiona's post where you can find good prices on CF media.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4885

If you're wary about purchasing things on the net, you can get CF cards at CompUSA (I worked there for 2yrs). Figure about $40 for 64mb, $70 for 128mb, $120 for 256mb, or $300 for a huge 512mb memory card.

Hope this helps!

[cactusklaw]

Thank You.Your help is quite useful and I am printing your advise so I can impliment it today.