Help a dim wit please
 

To be blunt I dont know what I'm doig really with a camera I was into years ago and my memory gets flushed out with all things new.

I'm going to try take some pictures today outdoors of some products we make at work. Think caravan awnings (tents on the side of a caravan) I have a Canon 400D to use and a tripod, rather than just point and shoot on an auto setting I wanted to try get better quality shots.

Can the boffs give me a few ball park settings to try (std Canon EFS 18-55 lens) for some better images in what looks like it might be overcasts skys above.

Take loads on all sorts of settings mate. you could try asking on http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1031 it's fairly busy on there and someone should be able to help if no one on here can.

cheers I'll have a look

Just looking for good detailed shots with nice depth of focus

if you want lots of depth stick the aperture down a little, - if you're using a tripod you should be able to use a nice small aperture, F11 or so lets say.
I'd use RAW since it's for work - will give you lots of scope to fiddle about with the image afterwards, adjusting the colours and exposure etc.

Thanks Jimmy, so you reckon stick it in Aperture mode @ f/11 and say 100 / 200 ISO and let it work the rest out?

I'll give this RAW biz a whirl too I think

Wuhoo its getting sunnier here