Catherine, I started with that lens and still got some good pictures with it - even with the lens that I have (which is a 400mm lens) I have to get pretty close to the birds to get good detail. Have it ready at all times, you just never know when a bird is going to land right in front of you! And you have more pixels so affectively a longer lens than me as the images are larger. The zoombrowser is just for zooming in the picture. You will need software to crop the picture. I use Printshop but there are other software packages, such as Picture Manager that comes with Microsoft's office tools suite. The zoombrowser has some editing but I've not used it - when you are viewing the picture, go to the edit menu and use the trim function. You draw a box with the cursor by starting in the top left corner and dragging the mouse until you have the size you want and then click on trim. Unfortunately it doesn't have the capability to resize the photo which is nice to do if the photo is greater than 800 pixels. However I believe that photobucket will resize it for you. I also compress the size of the file (not the size of the picture) to make it load faster. There is some post processing that is expected with the digital SLR's - mainly sharpening the image. Most point-n-shoots do in-camera sharpening but the typical setup of the SLR's is to do some sharpening but the rest is done with software (the software typically does a better job). But you can change the setting in the camera to do more sharpening so you don't have to do it with software. Also, the contrast and hue saturation of the Rebels can be a bit off so sometimes it requires adjusting those too. But don't panic, start slow and learn one adjustment at a time. It sounds like alot of work but once you get the hang of it, it literally takes seconds to post process. I'm sure the pros take much longer than that tweaking details but not something I do. Let me know if you want more help - I didn't want to overwhelm you! And let me know if you have any software, there are a variety of software packages available that are reasonably priced or free.

I did some searches to see if anyone was hinting at a price somewhere but didn't find anything. I imagine a couple or three hundred dollars since it looks like it's designed to compete with Aperture which is around 299. I just really like the way it lays things out in the Library filmstrip and the way the workflow proceeds from left-to-right and top-to-bottom. I've never used any truly high-end program so I don't know how to compare it to anything else. (I don't even know if it would be in the "high-end" category. I do know that I like it better than the Photoshop I'm using now, which is also Adobe. I've been reading reviews online and some are from the earlier betas so they're not very flattering but they improve over time. I don't know; it's just that it's free right now and something to "play" with. MichaelAT

Jim I think both pictures look lovely--just depends on which you prefer I think. Nice to have that feature on your camera so you can choose. Where do you find us so many inspiration photos of tables? They are great! I have been saving pics out of my old magazines so I can scan them and share them here, but I'm going to need my DH to help me figure out where the heck they go when I scan them in! LOL I'm sure it is an easy answer, but he got me a Mac laptop this time, and I have to say I really miss my old computer--I had finally figured most things I needed out on it--this one is a bit different, and a computer guru I'm not! Luvs

I found the info and will paste at the end of this post but the picture can be pretty big. salbwil just tell us what program you are using to resize and right click on the picture and click properties on the drop down menu and tell us what size it is. Here are the posting instructions from the webmaster at hearth.com: OK, so hereÂs the deal - your member photos (in your member profile) is limited to a small size - about 150 pixels (dots) square. The little Avatar next to your posts is limited to the same or maybe 100 each way..... Regular pictures, like in this forum, can be fairly large - almost full screen (1000 wide by 1000 high) and up to 200KB (200,000 bytes). But, many folks donÂt know the basics of email and web pics - IÂll try to explain. Pictures sent to the web and by email are best at what is called "screen resolution" meaning that they somewhat match the size od the dots on our monitors. For our purposes, this is aout 72 DPI (or dots per inch)..... What the average person needs is an "Image Management Program" and NOT the one that comes with Windows! If you are a PC user, download the free program called Picasa - This will organize and store all the photos on your disk and also allow you to export smaller copies (for web, etc.) and to even fix the photos up a bit! Apple users already have an image management program, iPhoto, which comes with every mac. To prepare web photos in iPhoto, simply select the photo or photos, go to Export (or it might say Share in newer versions) and when the dialog box comes up use the part that says "scale no bigger than" to select what you want the size of the exported photo to be. For purposes of this board, a photo with a width of 400-700 is ideal. Now, with Picasa, it is pretty much the same thing. Select the photo or photos and go to Export to Folder- the box shown in the picture below will come up and then you can select the picture size - say 480 wide as in this example. The other slider will compress the file size so the picture loads faster. In most cases, anything over 50% is good. If you want to learn more about this stuff, dig around on the links at: http://www.hearth.com/hcc/ - these are links from a course I teach at night school. If you are a user of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, use the "Image Size" dialog bx to convert your photo to 72 DPI and approx. 400-600 pixels wide (the height will work out automatically) - then use "Save for Web" and tryjpg "medium", file size should be really small. Of course, donÂt save changes to the original picture since you still want that big on your computer and for yourarhiving and storage.