Do you normally wear glass? If so, could it be that the dioptric on the camera is set incorrectly? If you look through the viewfinder, on the right, there's a little + and - sign with a small rotating button, try turning that while looking through the viewfinder and see if it gets less blurry one way or the other. For me, it needs to be turned all the way to the " - " side. I'm even thinking I might need to replace the dioptric because I'm so blind :P You can order them at the Canon site under Accessories, though probably somewhere online has them cheaper :) I hope this info helps :) -A P.S. Now, if I could just figure out how to set the 9 dot thing properly when working with depth of field, I might get some photos that don't need to be "Sharpened" in PhotoShop! Here is a link that might be useful: Dioptric

Hi Tom and welcome to the Photography forum. I have no personal experience with your camera so I opted to call up a copy of the owners manual to check some of the specifications, and I must say, for a point & shoot camera I was very impressed. I will try to take your questions in order and I am sure others will follow with even more information. Q: "Is it better to shoot the original at 10-14 mp and then reduce the pics, or shoot at 1 or 2 mp?" A:..Digital cameras record pictures by breaking them down into microfine dots of colored light, then recording the position of those dots. The term MP (mega pixels) is defining how many million dots per inch that is actually being recorded. In photography we refer to the quality of the detail as the "Resolution" of the picture. In a nutshell, the more MP that are recorded by your camera, the finer the detail it records. The question then becomes, how many MP do I need? The answer here depends upon what you intend to do with the pictures. If all you really desire are 4x5 or 4x6 full frame photos for the family album, then in most cases anything in the order of 4 to 6mp will suite your needs but, if you intend to go into post processing (editing and correcting on the computer) you will no doubt want to occassionally "crop" a photo, which means you cut a smaller section out of the photo and blow that up to full frame or you may occassionally have a photo that you want to blow up to 8 x 10, 11 x 14 or even poster size at 24 x 36. In order for your computer to expand the image it has to widen the dots and when we begin to seriously enlarge an image we begin to see a loss in image quality and often microfine white dots, which are defined in the electronics industry as "noise". Technically speaking the noise is generated when the dots are expanded too far and the camera or computer is left with open spaces between the dots, which it fills in with a white dot, but you need not know all that. Just suffice it to say that the larger the output you desire the more MP of information you need to give the computer to work with. Although nearly all cameras today are shooting in the 10 to 15MP range, even 6MP is sufficient to produce very good results for full frame images enlarged up to 8x10. Having said all of that, it also depends upon the physical size of the digital sensor that is in the camera. Obviously even if they are both rated at 12MP a 1/4" wide sensor in a cell phone cannot record as much data as a 2-1/2" sensor in a professional DSLR. Q:..Is it better to shoot the original at 10-14 mp and then reduce the pics, or shoot at 1 or 2 mp? A. I would always shoot the photo at the maximum resolution. In this manner you will have an archive photo that can be reduced for email or printed to a larger size. When I want to post a photo in a forum I pull the photo up in my editing program, reduce it, then hit "save as" and give it another file name or an extension on the file name, by example, when I reduce a photo for email I give add the word email to the file name and save that as a separate file. Q: Somebody told me there are different kinds of SD cards A. Basically there are two types of cards, SD cards and SDHC cards, which are high capacity cards. Tyically HD cards range from about 128kb to 2GB while the HD cards go up to 32GB and possibly more. I checked the specifications on your camera and the internal software will support using both SD & SDHC cards up to 32GB although I personally don't use any cards larger than 4GB. You can buy 2GB or 4GB cards on Ebay for about $5 to $7 with free S&H, whereas a 32GB card is in the order of $80. I just find it cheaper and more convenient to carry a couple spare 4GB cards, although in all honesty generally even one 4GB card is sufficient for most of my outings. By example, when shooting my Pentax K10d (10.2MP) if I shoot in RAW mode, which produces the highest resolution I can get up to 175 photos on one 4GB card or if I opt to set the camera on the highest resolution in JPEG mode I can get 804 frames on the same card. If I were to select the lowest resolution in JPEG mode I could get 2366 frames on one card. As you can see, if you were to get even one 4Gb SDHC card you could probably take your camera on a weeks vacation and never worry about running out of film, so to speak. If you do shoot a lot of photos I would stronly encourage you to get a couple extra rechargeabe batteries. They take up precious little space in the camera bag, but there is no worse feeling that being somewhere and just as your ready to shoot, the battery is dead. My camera will shoot over 700 frames on one battery, but I still never go in the field without two spares. Q...What's a good picture size to use for posting on forums like gardenweb? I use "Photoscape" to resize my photos for the web. The program is a free download from Google and in the editor mode it has a button marked "Resize". When you hit that button a window opens and you choose the width size you want. For the Web I generally hit the 900, which produces a photo at 900 x 598MP. (careful here, when you resize the photo be sure to use the "Save AS" and add an extension or give a new file name. This way it will not effect your archive photo. i sincerely hope this have offered you some help and I am sure others will soon add more info.

But..I keep reading the fact that the ink jet ink just won't last. I am printing my own pictures, too..and hoping for the best, but I just bought a Picture It program and it says the pictures will last anywhere from two months (two months!!!!!!!) to forty years...lol. Well, the forty years would probably take care of me and mine (the grandkids might like them longer than that though) but I have yet to see one that lasted only two months. I did a little experimenting and printed one off and pinned it up on my bulletin board in the light and air....it lasted about four months that way until it was a "ghost" picture. I have one printed on plain ol paper, but under glass on my desk here, and it has faded some, but is still nice. The book for the Picture It said that the ink will start "shifting" at about the two month point. I LOVE my digital pictures and you can print so many different sizes and do so much "adjusting" on them. But...I'm afraid ten years down the road, all of my work will be for naught. This is one of my favorite pictures and I treasure it....time will tell, I guess I wrote, "Christmas is Magic" underneath it. The book I was reading said to use the very best photo paper, and, of course, I do that, but I'm still a little worried about this. I've been doing this for about two years and keep going back and checking the pictures. I can't see that they are deteriorating as yet...

OK - I tried uploading directly from my camera to Photobucket - and you cannot do that. DANG! Here is an easy way to upload your pics to a computer (you never need to use the camera software - I really dislike Kodak especially, but if you are comfortable with it, that is ok) Plug your camera in to the computer, or place card into card reader. Go to MY COMPUTER and find the device. Double click on it and your images should pop up. You may see them as thumbnails, tiles, icons, or list - depending on how your computer is set...you can always change that. Click on the first image you want to copy - then hold down the shift key and select the last image you want to copy - this will select all of them in between also. Right click and select copy. Go to the Desktop of the computer. Right click on a blank area and mouse over NEW-> go over to FOLDER and click on that to create a new folder. You can rename it when you create it or just leave it named NEW FOLDER (it doesn't matter). Double click on the folder to open. Right click and select PASTE. Your photos will be zipping into this folder! You can upload to Photobucket like normal from there. This will NOT remove the pictures from your camera card. Delete your folder when you are done. DON'T forget your card if you have removed it from your camera!! You can create the desktop folder at any time - you also don't have to have it located on the desktop - but this would be easiest while you are traveling so you don't forget to delete. You should be able to practice this at home. If you can't shut down the Kodak program - just let it do it's thing - then try it after it has finished. Or try it at a library. The little thumb drives (USB drives) and camera memory cards are the same thing - just in a different package. An external hard drive is just like a thumb drive, just bigger. THumb drives are so easy to lose! They are just the handiest things - but they go missing for me all the time.... Buy some extra cards before you travel. Try them out before you go. Format them in your camera first!! They are cheap and you can NEVER EVER take too many pictures :) If this doesn't make sense at all -I can post screen shots later (probably tomorrow)