Noelfitz,
I have the PowerShot SX150 and there are several thingsI noticed with it. First, they are decent cameras for the price point, but they tend to be a little soft on the focus. To get fairly sharp photos of plants, you will need a tripod and use the 2 second delay for the shutter. I usually set the tripod up so that I can zoom to about 50mm to get the best shots. Second, mine (and my son's SX160) tend to overexpose on plants, so use one of the manual modes to underexpose by about -1/3 to -2/3. I tend to keep the ISO at about 200, the white balance on cloudy to bring up the color, and keep the mycolor at neutral since vivid tends to oversaturate. Third, the far end of the zoom is very soft on the images, so don't have high expectations on anything shot from a great distance. Oh, and be sure not to use image stabilization if you use the tripod.
I don't know about any good tutorials on this camera, but once you get used to the little nuances, you'll find yourself liking it quite a bit. Since the SX170 has the lithium battery, you should get about 300 still images per charge. The autofocus gets a bit slow in low light conditions, but overall I give this camera a thumbs up.
Steve
