Focusing powershot A720IS?

[buff]

First of all I don't know anything about photography but I do bird and I have A720 and I tried to take some pictures with it and I have had hard time focusing on bird. Camera usually focuses on the closest branch of tree not on the bird so naturally I get blury bird. Manual focus is also more automatic than manual.
So do you guys know how to focus truly manualy with A720 or is that impossible with this camera?

Regards.

[RAH]

My Canon S5 does not allow manual focus in Auto mode (it must be in Program, Aperture Mode, etc). Perhaps the 720 is similar. Surely it explains how to set manual focus in the instruction manual. Anyway, try setting it to Program Mode instead and see if that works.

I'd recommend using Program Mode anyway, since it is always more flexible and otherwise similar to Auto.

Everyone has trouble with this issue - trying to focus on birds in trees with branches all around, so it isn't just your camera. It is decidedly difficult to use manual focus under these conditions, unless the bird is perched for a long time.

Also, unless you are able to get very close, the A720, with its 35-210mm equivalent lens, is pretty hard to take bird pictures with. We're talking the equivalent of 4x binocs here, which makes it pretty difficult to get frame-filling pictures.

[buff]

This camera has 6x optical zoom, which for some reason doesn't give me same picture quality as yosemite 6x30, which is why I think of going to higher optical zoom camera but I don't know how much optical zoom is enough?
As I said camera doesn't have true manual focus and as I said I know nothing about photography and I was excpecting same kind of manual focus in camera as in a binocular?
Where can I educate myself about cameras and photography?

Regards.

[RAH]

The camera has 6x zoom, but it doesn't start at 1, it starts at less than 1 - i.e. it starts at a wide-angle. So, it starts at about -2 and goes to +4. This is why it seems less than 6x binocs - it IS less.