I just bought one as a sidekick for my Mavica (which is too big/bulky at times) and for the price I'm pretty impressed. Problem is, most of my pictures are fairly grainy (more so than I would expect). For example look at this stich shot:
http://robert.iseekweb.com/arizonasunset.jpg

Maybe I'm just really anal about it, but I was planning on using it for web development purposes and at high resolutions it looks like it won't work.

I also searched on here and saw this shot (good shot by the way):
http://caedes.net/Zephir.cgi?lib=Caedes::Infopage&image=TH0342-1079494497.jpg

That user appears to have the same 'problem' as me. Am I expecting too much out of the camera? Or do I not have it configured properly.

I gave another attempt yesterday with it (stich effect again) and came up with this shot:
http://robert.iseekweb.com/arizonasunset2.jpg

Settings: ISO: 400 (using a tripod so..), Exposure: 0, White Balance: Auto, Mode: Stitch, Even on P mode with relatively the same settings it's doing this.

This problem is, from what I can tell, the correlary to film grain for a film camera. The film grain is replaced by the individual CCD elements. Each CCD "pixel" sees a slightly different view. There is fancy processing that the camera can do to minimize this effect (eg. supersampling), but I'm willing to bet that the cheaper cameras don't do it.

I'm thinking about doing a few experiments on using layer in Photoshop or image stacking to minimize this effect and make nice smooth skies. Image stacking is an astrophotography technique of combining many small images with inherent noise into one nice looking image.

Keep in mind though, that I have no actual experience or knowedge to back up the preceeding comments. =)

I think your problem is the ISO setting. 400 is more used for night shots and causes a lot of noise. Canon's ISO rating is also lower than other camera's (I have an A80), An ISO of 50 on Canon is equivalent to ISO 100 on other camera's.

To have shots without any noise (or as little noise as possible) you shouldn't use an ISO setting of more than 100.

Also, that's a big problem with digital camera's when using them for night photography.
Check out: http://www.geocities.com/crusader0304/eclipse.jpg

That's a shot I took during the lunar eclipse with ISO 400, resting the camera on a table (didn't have a tripod), and cloud cover going by... 15s exposure. As you can see it has a lot of noise, and that is with just a black backdrop.

Why do digital cameras even need an ISO setting? I though that it was a measurement of the speed of the film. Shouldn't a shutter speed setting be good enough? It's not like you're switching out the CCD element with a higher speed one or anything.

Crusader:
I was actually experimenting with the ISO setting and found that with the tripod I was getting better daytime shots at 400.

I've seen shots of like a highway at night where you can see the beams of light. I know alot of people have done this with the a70 (one of the major reasons I was impressed with it), any idea how they do it? With what settings? Thanks for both of your posts.

Strange. From my knowledge of digital cameras most people don't use an ISO higher than 100 during the day, the only time they use a higher ISO is when they want to take night shots without using the flash.

As for the highway shot, I would guess it's done with an high ISO and a long exposure. Eg. 15s (that's the max on the A80). That should give it that "blurry streak" look.

Many fine large-format portraits are taken with slower film stock; perhaps the same could be said for digital as far as image information is concerned?