SX 20 Help

[Denise40]

I just purchased an SX 20 and reading the manual and looking at the camera itself and I have a few questions for any of you experts out there. First off, when I look through the view finder or the LCD monitor, it all looks grainy and out of focus. Also, what setting to you keep the pixels at? Currently, mine shows "L", which is the highest setting. Do you keep yours there or lower it? One last question for now: Did you leave the Digital zoom on or turn it off? I thought that just by putting on auto mode, that it would be easy, but it's not looking that way. TIA

[Jon]

The display is a fairly grainy one; the back LCD tends to look better than the electronic viewfinder though.

Yes, keep it at Large and Fine; leave Digital Zoom turned off - you can get the same cropping by post-processing your image.

Setting it to Auto is the easiest way to get photos; learning all about photography is how to get the best photos (and leave a permanent hole in your wallet).

[Denise40]

Thanks Jon. I will go out tomorrow during the daylight and see how it goes. I am going to Disney World for Christmas, and want to hopefully get some good lights pics.

[Vidcanon]

The display is a fairly grainy one; the back LCD tends to look better than the electronic viewfinder though.

Yes, keep it at Large and Fine; leave Digital Zoom turned off - you can get the same cropping by post-processing your image.

Setting it to Auto is the easiest way to get photos; learning all about photography is how to get the best photos (and leave a permanent hole in your wallet).


Sorry for butting in on your thread Denise but I have an SX20 and I was wondering Jon why you say turn the digital zoom off . I do bird photos and will I get the best results that way. Thanks in advance.

[Jon]

Well, all you're doing with "digital zoom"is an in-camera crop and resize. At 4x digital zoom, you're using 1/16 of the pixels in the camera; it's essentially averaging each pixel with its neighbor to split it up into 16 smaller, artificial pixels. You can do a crop and resize yourself with at least as good results in any moderately adequate photo editing program, including free ones that don't require a lot of computer power. And if you do the crop and resize in your computer you can change your mind about what you want.

[Denise40]

Here are a couple of photos that I took today with the SX20. The only thing I did was crop it. Any feedback would be appreciated. I left it on auto just to see what it could do.

TIA

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/Denise40/IMG_0011.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/Denise40/IMG_0008.jpg

[Vidcanon]

I'm an owner of an SX20 and to be honest I'm not happy with the AUTO results. I much prefer manual or custom. To me they are both overexposed or it may be my computer monitor.