[font=Comic Sans MS]I have just purchased a canon s200 digital camera. I want to get the most from my pictures. Does anyone know about "white balance"? The camera has an automatic setting for white balance but I am wondering if my pictures would be better if I set the white balance manually. [/font]

[font=Comic Sans MS]Re my Canon S200. How do I know what resolution to use? How do I decide on the compression?[/font]

Dino, others may have a technically more sound answer than I do. My feeling is that you need to experiement. Test the auto white balance under different light sources, then try a manual white balance. Compare the shots and see which is more accurate.

Originally Posted by Dino [font=Comic Sans MS]Re my Canon S200. How do I know what resolution to use? How do I decide on the compression?[/font]

I like to think that resolution setting is pretty straight forward. Shoot with
the highest possible. Why? You can always resize the image to make it smaller
but you cannot, easily, re-size it to make it larger.

Same with compression. The best compression would be no compression.

Ian

Someone oughta put this over in point and shoot.

And I agree with wxwax.
Experimentation is the key.
Go burn a couple hundred images of stuff you look at a lot with different settings and get your own feel of what's happening.
Something else to note is that without a calibrated monitor, it's gonna be a little hard to dial that thing in, unless he's printing every variant of the experiment, and somehow documenting each print with the information regarding camera settings...

Originally Posted by wxwax Dino, others may have a technically more sound answer than I do. My feeling is that you need to experiement. Test the auto white balance under different light sources, then try a manual white balance. Compare the shots and see which is more accurate.

Dino, my suggestion is to shoot on the very highest resolution you can. It's a 2 megapixel camera, so if you have a decent enough sized compact flash card, you'll have room for hundreds of shots. The benefit of shooting at the highest resolution is that your shot will be the best that it can be.

BTW, your threads are better located in the Point and Shoot forum. I'll ask for them to be moved.

Originally Posted by John Macdonald Someone oughta put this over in point and shoot.

Done. Dino I also merged your two S200 threads into one so we can keep them together.

Thanks Sid.

Originally Posted by wxwax Dino, others may have a technically more sound answer than I do. My feeling is that you need to experiement. Test the auto white balance under different light sources, then try a manual white balance. Compare the shots and see which is more accurate.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by patch29 Done. Dino I also merged your two S200 threads into one so we can keep them together.