White balance & dull photos

[Myka]

Is there a trick you all use to set the white balance? My camera, a Canon G9, has "manual" white balance where I point to a white area and push a button to set it there. It always seems like it is either too green, too red, or too blue. It is frustrating. Any tricks?

Lately I have been getting a lot of dull looking photos and lots of graininess too. A FTS for example will show a whole bunch of dull colors and then say, red (or green) will be neon in the photo. The neon parts will be out of focus. What the heck? and why the graininess?

Maybe it's time to replace the camera, I'm not sure...