10 quick tips for the S3/S5
These ten suggestions will help you taking great advantage of your camera pronto!

I. Neck strap, cards and batteries...

1. Don't use the neck strap. Canon provides you with the ultimate "hey-look-at-me-I'm-a-tourist" anti-accesory: the neck strap. Forget about it. Instead, use a wrist strap. Attach it to the right (seeing the camera from the back) and set the lens cap to the left. You will feel your camera more secure and the lens cap won't obstruct your way.

2. 2Gb cards. The movie feature of the S3-S5 is superb and the 8 mega pixels of the S5 will need more space. Use a 2Gb card at least. Check the writing speed and buy the fastest card you can. You'll notice an improvement when shooting, but also when you use a card reader to download your pics to a computer. If you don't like to put all the eggs on the same basket, buy a couple of 2Gb cards.

3. Batteries. You'll need all the power you can, specially with the big display on the S5. We've found that the Sony Ni-Mh batteries are pretty good and have 2500mAh. Buy two sets of four, so you can always have a fresh and fully charged set anytime. The Sony's BCG-34HUE (why don't these guys use a simple name like "UltraFastCharger II" or something?) is a 15 minutes charger that's great. There's nothing more annoying than waiting 8 hours to charge 4 AA batteries.

4. Don't drop those batteries. The S3 has a dedicated compartment for memory card; the S5, instead, uses the same space to store both batteries and memory card. We have all dropped the batteries when changing the card and that's quite annoying. The solution? Very simple: make sure that the camera is completely up side down, and then (only then) open the door. Oh, and don't worry, the door won't break when you close it, just press firmly and that's it.

II. Garçon! The Menu, please...

5. Shortcut button. Having a shortcut button is good indeed, since we rarely use the direct print function. We've found that setting the light metering is quite useful in the shortcut button. In the Camera Menu, press up the 4 ways dial (this way you won't need to scroll down the whole menu items). The "Set shortcut button..." item will appear right up to the "Save setting...". Select it with the "set" button and choose "Light Metering", press "set" again and you're ready to go: light metering at your fingertip reach.

6. The heretic advice: leave it in auto mode. Both the S3 and S5 are a pure Photo Aficionado dream: they are highly customizable cameras and that's great, but sometimes you need to take a really quick snapshot of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie joining your neighbor's BBQ (well, maybe not, but...) In such a hurry, you turn on the camera, press the shutter button, and just when you want to share with your friends (or sell the photo to your favorite Tabloid) such precious memory (well, almost), you find that your mode dial was set on "M" mode and you have nothing. So, the sixth quick tip for your S3/S5 is: always leave your camera in the auto mode... Just in case.

6. Custom timer: always too fast or too slow. Although the Image Stabilization is great, sometimes you need to get extra steady with a tripod. It's really annoying to wait 10 seconds for the auto-timer and even the 2 seconds option may seem to be too long. Set the auto-timer to 1 second. And, on the contrary, if you're posing for the classic family photo, 10 seconds may seem too fast. You may prefer 20 seconds. To set the self-timer use the camera menu, scroll down to "Self Timer" and press "set". You can set it up to 30 seconds.

7. Auto ISO shift. This is an intelligent ISO changer. It won't crank up the ISO unless the scene really needs it. Since any compact camera will suffer at high ISO sensitivities, this is a great option to maintain the noise under control. Use the Camera Menu and set "Auto ISO Shift" on.

8. Tally lamp off, please. When shooting a movie of yourself, you may want to see if the camera is recording; for such cases the tally lamp will tell you if you are OK. But in most of the cases the Tally Lamp is annoying, especially if you want to shoot a Candid movie. Turn it off within in the Camera Menu.

9. What's that C on the mode dial? Not everyone uses the C mode, and it's a shame. You can save all your settings such as ISO, shutter speed, aperture and you can even save the zoom or manual focus settings. Just adjust your camera to your taste and then choose the list item in the Camera Menu "Save settings..." The next time you want to recall that setting just turn your dial mode to "C".

10. Custom display. The S3/S5 has an electronic viewfinder, that means that you'll have as many information as with the LCD monitor. The "Custom Display" item on the Camera Menu will let you choose two different sets of information. You may want an uncluttered display and, on the other you may choose the whole enchilada; in this second case we've found that having the shooting info, grid lines and histogram is a very useful setting.