I finally got myself a digital camera. I got the Canon S410. I nearly returned it when I heard the SD300 was coming onto the market next month, but after reading the reviews for that camera, I figured I made the right choice with the S410.
Anyway, so now I don’t get all these options for taking pictures? Do ‘Normal, Fine, Super, etc.’ all relate to picture size or quality? How many can I fit onto a 512 MB card?
I’m confused … my camera is oh so pretty though. 
Congratulations 
The settings relate to the jpeg compression performed when storing the image… which translate into Picture Size… finer quality pictures will have less jpeg compression and hence will take more space on the card than the shrinked “Normal” versions.
normal = less size in filesize
super = bigger size in filesize
difference, picture quality IF u r taking printouts like 11 inches by 17inches :-)
its simple. Good things come for a price (in a cameras case, good pictures cost you space. )
Congrats on your new buy though.
Hope you and your camera will have a good time.
Good choice. I’ve been using the Ixus 500 (S500 in the US) for quite a while now and it’s excellent. :k:
It’s has so many options which is confusing. It will take me some time to get used to. The flash is super strong. I look like a ghost in the pictures I’ve taken indoors so far. I guess maybe I need to play around with the settings a bit.
Right now, I have it set on M2 (picture size) with Superfine quality. I haven’t actually downloaded anything onto my comp yet so I have no clue how it will look.
Pictures look a lot better on the computer than the little camera screen, believe me.
For exposure always keep cameras an f-stop lower than 0. You can change that setting when you are in picture-taking mode, press setup a couple of times and you get to the exposure mode, turn it towards the left a notch or 2. Ofcourse check the pictures on the computer and adjust according to your liking. For me -2 has always been the best. It gets deeper colors.