Andrea, I shoot RAW exclusively now for the reasons you stated except occasionally flip it over to sports because it goes auto to burst (I think), and does only .jpg. I love Photoshop, has a very steep learning curve, waited years until I got a $299 upgrade with Elements to CS2. I don't just use it for my photographs, and I agree with you about some of the software that comes with cameras, read about Nikon's, refused to get in the camera wars, was really torn between Canon and Nikon, at the time I thought Canons had better noise reduction at the expense of IQ, understood that going in. I started just doing graphics learning all I could with PSP (quit upgrading at 5 because I didn't like some things), then bought Photo Impact (fun for awhile but a waste of money), but when I saw the power of PS, I was sold. I don't use all the features, no, don't jump on the upgrade bandwagon (lightbox is really cool, can't afford it), but I love their USM and ACR white balance corrections and several others such as highlight/shadows tool (because of the limited dynamic range with all digital cameras, may be better with the more expensive, super-high resolution ones), when I want to make them pop more. And a lot of it is strictly a matter of taste. There are some incredibly talented with PS; I'm not one of them. The actual conversion process doesn't take more than 30 seconds, and when I can, I batch convert using scripts. I know everything you said is true, especially you can use Nikon pics right out of the cam, sharp as a tack, same with some good P&S cameras. Have to watch oversharpening, too. For web viewing, people probably can't tell the difference about sharpening. I can see it, very occasionally I don't bother with it, depending, but do like to do my own cropping and straightening, can't stand really crooked photos unless for creative effect. Other software does that just as well. I highly respect your opinion, and it sounds like you are some kind of pro. I don't presume to know everything. Blowing blows more dust in than I get out sometimes, always do that first regardless, a couple tries, then test, but I have used the wet method only once, got it better, but just let the dustbunnies I missed be for now and try to be careful changing my lenses. The only people I'd really trust to clean my sensor filter, not the sensor on Canon, but extremely delicate, is Canon. Nobody on the Canon dslr forum I've read yet on dpreview for almost 5 years now sends theirs anywhere for sensor filter cleaning; they all clean them themselves, most very confidently (not me!) many, many use a wet method usually Copperhill or a pen. I used extra pure alcohol and qtips I got at the medical supply center, just a drop w/eyedropper. I first try the dry method with Walgreen's brand q-tips very gently. The camera store person told me some use plastic knives from McDonald's! Not for me! I don't really trust my local camera store or Best Buy technicians. With the camera store, last time I was in was tempted to butt in and tell the customer something I happened to know, while the salesman didn't seem to, held my peace. Had some photos and a painting scanned I wanted to retouch, state-of-the art, awful, ended up using my camera and tripod. The camera store wasn't set up to cater to dslr users, maybe they're more with it now. I hate cloning out dustbunnies once a bad one gets in there, most don't show at the sizes and resolution I use, but do clone quite a bit for other reasons and like the healing tool. Once a piece of fiber got in there, it drove me nuts, that I got out by blowing, need a better blower, the Hurricane one. Sorry for taking up so much "airtime". Sooner or later most dslr owners are going to have to choose how to deal with it. Then if I screw up, I screw up, and will pay the consequences. You HAVE to clean your lenses, even on P&S cameras, which I do as little as possible. I know Nikon has fine cameras and lenses; that is why the choice was so hard, and sometimes I still look back, but now I'm invested heavily in a few lenses not as many as some have, don't need them, but very expensive and wouldn't get near what I paid for them if I sold them, even though they are all in mint condition.

Yes, I often stop down to 1 1/2 stopss too, depending on if I'm seeing a lot of light areas in the image. In fact, I don't have a whole lot of time and a big garden, so I have to be efficient. Not knowing what mood I'll be in re depth of field when I look at them later on, I'll take multiple pictures in multiple f stops and in each of those f stops, I'll usually take multiple bracketed exposures, if I explained that right. It's not unusual for me to take 200-300 pictures on a 30 minutes walk around the garden being really efficient! The problem I'm having now is that my lens is too slow and I'm getting lots of slightly blurred images. I need a faster lens, which is too expensive for the moment. Re the reds, if you use the magnetic lasso in photoshop you can isolate areas that you want to have a separate exposure. Also, there is now very exciting new technology by Nik software where you can just click on any area and change that area. I'll definitely be getting that at some point. In the meantime, if it's really a problem, I'll isolate the part of the image I need to change with the magnetic lasso or just manipulate the exposure with levels, but I don't like super saturated reds, so I'll underexpose the reds by a variety of settings to be sure that there is detail in the bloom later on. Working with the exposure should help with the color. If not, you can always manipulate the individual color tones.

Just MHO, I wouldn't buy that camera for bird photos. Not if you think you might get serious about photography. Depending on your budget, consider Canon S3 IS or S5 IS (the S2 IS takes good photos also). Panasonic FZ20 or FZ50. The S3, S2 and FZ20 are older models that can be bought for around $250. The Canons work well with tele converters (you might want to get into photographing birds at greater distances. The Canons have 12X zoom lens and shutter speeds 1/3200 fast enough to capture the beat of hummer's wings. There is a learning curve with these cameras but study and practice will pay off with really nice photographs. When starting with a new camera, the thing is not to give up. There is no film to buy or processing fees so you can take a thousand practice photos for almost nothing. Visit the bird watching forum and ask this same question mentioning hummingbird photos. Ask the folks which cameras they use and if they will show you a couple hummer photos. There is a thread now about new cameras. Happy hunting. Marnie Here is a link that might be useful: Bird forum

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.