Actually I'd ignore the EXR link as the HS10 doesn't have an EXR chip!!

The following link deals with settings specific to the HS10 and has been praised by many HS10 owners in the past:

http://eyemindsoul.blogspot.com/2010/10/fujifilm-hs-10-how-to-set.html

Thanks very much will take a look and hopefully be back with some results!!

Cheers

Just to add one point, the eyemindsoul site mentions a white balance of 0.0... please only set this if you dont plan on shooting indoors or with anything other than natural light.  Otherwise set as you see it, sunny for sunny days, cloud for cloudy, and toggle through the indoor light settings while on live view for indoor till you get something close to what you see.  For other tricky situations, use the manual set white balance its nice and easy.  This will sound like gobbledygook just now but for ease, leave it on auto. 

There are a few other great sites for the HS10 but they may just confuse you for now.  MY advice is read up on the P mode and use that untill you get used to the camera.  You'll get far better results than auto.  Main thing is, dont worry about mistakes, its a learning curve and you're not wasting film so shoot away and learn about the basics of cameras.  

I'll start you off with some of them.  

ISO ... this is the gear box of the camera, the higher the number, the faster the camera will react.  But go too high, and you'll lose control of the images with lots of speckles called 'noise' ISO100 is first gear if you like and will give great results on a fine day, 200 is twice as fast and good for cloudy days, 400 is four times as fast and good for all weathers and nature/sports.  800 is probably the fastest you want to go really as the image will degrade.  So use this when you are shooting fast scenes such as a bird flying when 400 wont do the job.  

I leave mine on 400, and change to 100 if I want better image quality on a fine day.

Shutter speeds and apertures are related.  And are the 'eye' of the camera.  Every time you blink, you emulate what your shutter does but the other way around, when you click the shutter button to take a picture, the camera 'opens' its eye and closes it letting light in to hit the sensor and take the photo.  So think of shutter speeds as faster or slower blinks.  Slower blinks are for darker scenes, such as indoors or night time, and faster speeds are for brighter days or freezing the action.  

Aperture, is how wide the eye is when its open.  The wider the eye is, the faster the shutter speed you can use because more light gets in.  So a wide open 'eye' is F2.8 the 'eye' almost closed is F11.  You may ask why you need to do this...  well its all about creativity.  And an acronym you'll come across is DOF (depth of field) this means how far into the scene the camera will focus itself.  At F2.8 the camera will focus on a face, but leave the foreground and background blurred (as long as its further away than you are from the person).  at F11 everything including the background and foreground will be in focus.  Mostly this is left (or I do) on F6.3 -F8 for general shooting.  There are other factors which will alter your setting but I wont go into that now.  

So to recap, your ISO controls how fast your camera works, the shutter speed controls how fast it reverse blinks, and the aperture is how wide its eye is open.  All these are related too.  Because the higher your ISO the faster your camera can blink resulting in being able to freeze the action on a dull day.  

There are many other things to learn, but thats enough info for now to get you started.  So use the P mode, and just set your ISO depending on the weather, or leave it on 200 or 400 until you get your head around it.  The P mode will set your shutter and your aperture for you but give you control over the gearbox (ISO) for how fast it reacts.  

Here endeth the first lesson :D 

Hope thats not confused you too much. 

Quite welcome matey, Ive always tried to put things in laymans terms rather than a condusing mass of photographic terms cos not everybody thinks that way.  Its just a machine with a very thick computer at the end of the day it still needs to be told what to do auto mode makes that into perfect sence, where it tries to think for itself and comes back with errrr less than great photo's.

Im not trying to be awkward here but the one day that I tried the settings given on that 'eyemindsoul' page the set of pictures I got were terrible, the colours looked worse even than some overcooked HDRs.  I quickly changed back to my own custom settings which are not perfect but in the right circumstances get me some nice results.

I did make a blog using some of those pics I wasnt happy with so heres the link for those who never saw it first time around.

http://www.myfinepix.com/blog/147017/263067

Hiya Tez, cheers matey  

Andy, I fully agree with you, its all in the eye of the beholder, there is a site I think its some Japanese guy... Jacky Lee?  That's probably the best one, but as with yourself I made my own settings that I was quite happy with too.  But they possibly wont suit others, as not everyone likes to take the same type of pic.  So the lesson is take what you like, leave what you don't.  

Hiya Carol, every site on photography will make you feel daft if you're a beginner and there's no need for it really.  A few analogies always help more than sticking with masses of terms.  OK its correct, but its not helpful, beginners will learn those terms in their own time and its just confusing.  I used to teach computers in much the same way using analogies for years, and people kept coming back to my classes for a reason.  

I agree Daz, thats the clever way to teach.  No point in deliberately confusing the pupil with loads of jargon to make yourself seem cleverer than you really are like some folk do.  Best to give the person the confidence to teach themselves.