Thanks guys, the real trick was to take lots of pictures and only show the best. I am only using a slimline Hoya Pro1 Digital protector, so basically a clear bit of glass. I wanted to try out the camera first without any alteration before experimenting with circular polarizers. The pictures are directly from the camera with only a resize down using Microsoft-Paint.
1) I used aperture priority: set to f18, the camera came up with shutter 1/160th, ISO 100 (I set zoom at 48mm).
I love this picture as the only thing missing is Charlton Heston riding a horse past a half buried Statue of Liberty. I provided the angry intelligent ape aspect to the picture. I took 15 shots and had various success with tourists photo-bombing and wonky horizons, but the look of all pictures was the same.
2) I tried Scene intelligent mode - auto: the camera came up with f8, shutter 1/125th, ISO 100 (I set zoom at 24mm). I only took one picture to get this but was using the human settings of 2 Carlton Crownies, and one Wild Turkey and coke.
3) Scene intelligent mode - auto: the camera came up with f11, shutter 1/250th, ISO 100 (I set zoom at 24mm). I took 15 pictures to get this one. There is a huge variance in the pictures depending on the sun/clouds and what the camera used for its metering. For example the attached picture was taken with the same settings 11 seconds earlier and is far less impressive! I selected this one because this is what I remember it actually looking like.
4) Scene intelligent mode - auto: the camera came up with f4.5, shutter 1/125th, ISO 100 (I set zoom at 105mm). I took 4 pictures to get this one. Not sure if its sea spray or mist, but I really like it.
5) Scene intelligent mode - auto: the camera came up with f8, shutter 1/125th, ISO 100 (I set zoom at 24mm). I took 9 pictures to get this one, again huge variance in the pictures depending on the sun/clouds and what the camera used for its metering.
6) Scene intelligent mode - auto: the camera came up with f4, shutter 1/30th, ISO 200 (I set zoom at 24mm). I took lots of pictures mainly framing differences whilst cursing my budget for not going wider than 24mm. This was a difficult photo to take as I was jostling for position with a young Swedish lady wearing the smallest leopard print shorts I have ever seen whilst sporting a Canon L series lens mounted on a camera larger than her head
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So far I have noticed the most variance in pictures having back-lit scenes that are taken within seconds of each other. However when taking scenes with the light source behind me, the Canon with auto settings seems to generate pictures that pretty much look the same.
