hellu ladies 
i was just wondering what difference the standard/fine/superfine settings on digital cameras make.
i mean is there any noticable difference at say, 5MP (i got a sx100 and decided to use it at 5Mp coz i feel 8MP is overkill and this way i save space for more shots)
and another thing, how many shots would it store at 5MP on a 2gb card ?? (just a rough estimate)
i would guess around 600 maybe?
hope guys can answer too 
ot: i have the same cam. how do u make the cam shoot in 5mp instead of 8mp?
^^press the func button and the lowest option is for size
the cam is at home right now and i am not
Canon PowerShot SX100 IS Review: 1. Introduction:
you can see all of it here…they have gif pictures of the menu
The fine, superfine are just compression levels. By turning down the resolution to 5 MP, you aren’t saving a whole lot of space - 400 to 500 KB or so. If you think about it, 600 photos is a LOT and you’ll probably run out of batteries long before you run out of space. 2GB should be enough for ~550 to 600 photos.
I would say just leave the resolution at 8MP and the quality to Superfine. Spend less time worrying about how many photos you can fit on your card and more time trying all the functions and settings.
^^its that my parents are going to ladakh and no computer access limits the pics they can take… i guess 600 in a week is still a lot 
cells can be charged but there wont be anywhere else to store the pics
i checked dpreview…it says 600 pics at 8 MP/superfine … so i guess thats ok
Ah goodie. 600 should be sufficient for a week. SD is cheap so you can buy another 2GB if you think they’ll run short. My dad returned last week from around a month long hike/trek trip. I had gone out for a few days so I had taken our Sony DSC H1. Some of the other guys who went on the trip got their cameras along and there are close to 14GB of photos from those cameras now. What my dad did carry with him was a solar charger for AA batteries and it took care of the charging issues.
At the same shop, he had also bought a silly cap but this one has a small solar panel on the top so if you are out in the sun, there’s this fan attached to the front that blows air in your face. Funny and it actually works!
^^lol
it aint like that, there will be electricity obviously so charging is not an issue
and this is the only camera going with them
I want that cap!
No but seriously, shooting at 5MP is not a bad idea if you tend to take a lot of snaps - or you might be deleting in playback mode a lot instead of copying them onto your PC and deleting them there. This saves battery life, indirectly - cuz you won’t be in playback mode so much.
As for compression standard, the real difference that each setting makes is in post-processing. Superfine will give you a little bit more latitude than the others. Again, Fine is not such a bad idea after all.
So, Fine and 5MP is my setting of choice considering what you do. 5MP is still good enough to take huge prints…so unless you want to crop like crazy (unlikely considering you have 10x of zoom already), 8MP is not all that needed.
Out.
Payne
You can store ~1000 pics on a 4GB card. Which means you can store more than 650 at 5MP on a 2GB
^^infact dpreview said 600 shots at8mp/superfine on a 2 gig card (around 3.37mb per shot)
and if its down to even fine setting, that saves a whole lot of space
so payne comfirms my initial settings… i do what payne says
^ Well its ~4MB/shot in reality.. dpreview are not always right (look at the specifications listed for some cameras). Though it depends on what the picture is. Anyway, carry on with your setting then
Leh has plenty of cyber cafes and you can get CDs and DVDs burned there, though it is slightly expensive at 60-120 bucks for each cd/dvd. Also a slow speed 2gb sd card would set you back by 450-550 bucks, you might want to look at that option as well. Would come in handy in future for videos.
^^i guess 5MP is really fine because nobody is going to crop them or anything
and nobody is going to sit and zoom into each pic to see loss of quality
so 5mp/fine setting it is
i guess another 2gb sd card is also an option because they are practically giving them out these days