Need Some Help!!!

Can someone give me a crash course on the following two features:

White Balance

Image Resolution

With regard to White Balance, I am comparing three camers, two of them have the standard "Presets" and also offer a "Manual" feature. The third does not have this feature. How important is this feature?? If this has to do with the amount of "white Light" allowed on the picture than is this something that could be "fixed" in a photo shop program???

With regard to Inamge Resolution, I am used to seeing 640 x 480, 1600 x 1200, etc. Again two of the three have the "usual" resolutions but the third has the following:

2048 x 1536, 1656 x 1242, 1200 x 900, 2576 x 1932, 2576 x 1716

Are these better, worse, no significant difference??

Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

Welcome to POTN

Now let me introduce you to google, an excellent search engine, that can answer many of your questions
http://www.google.co.n​z …en&q=define:Whi​te+balance
http://www.photoxels.c​om/tutorial_white-balance.html

Best tell us what cameras you're looking at, there's not really enough info there to give you good information. On a digital SLR a "custom/manual" white ballance is very helpful, and any camera that doesn't have it is probably aimed at people who want a point and shoot.

With resolution more is better.

I am looking at:

Canon Powershot A520
Panasonic DMC-LZ2
Kodak EasyShare C340

The Kodak is the one with the "non-traditional" features the other two have.

When i'm looking at compact cameras I just read reviews at http://www.dpreview.co​m or steves reviews (I forget the URL) - and sometimes I just read the conclusion not the whole article. I only ever shoot those cameras on auto, which seems to work quite well.

White Balance - When using the camera WB settings, the camera tries to adjust internally to compensate for the colour of the light it sees. A camera sees light from the likes of Tunsten light differently from our eyes. Read the links above for comments on this.

Resolution - "I am used to seeing 640 x 480, 1600 x 1200, etc." - Sounds like screen resolurtion?

2048 x 1536, 1656 x 1242, 1200 x 900, 2576 x 1932, 2576 x 1716 - This is the image size in pixels. 2048x1536=3.14 Mega pixels.

Do not confuse the two. The bigger the numbers indicate larger (higher res) images.

Read the links provided and search the net for advice. There's lots of info on the subject out there.

cheers
Jim

tim wrote:
When i'm looking at compact cameras I just read reviews at http://www.dpreview.co​m or steves reviews (I forget the URL) - and sometimes I just read the conclusion not the whole article. I only ever shoot those cameras on auto, which seems to work quite well.

Tim, that URL is http://www.steves-digicams.com/

I knew someone would know it

Before I went out and bought my 300D, I was glued to dpreview, steve's digicams, and a few other sites - only found POTN afterwards!