Kathy the macro is a Nikon (Nikkor) AF-S 85mm f/3.5G ED VR. I also have a Nikon 55-200 mm zoom but the macro takes better and more close up pics. This macro lens is about the strongest this camera can handle. Maybe after a year or so, if I progress I'll invest in a D700 that can handle a super macro but I'm not ready to spend $2500 for a camera body and another $800+ for a lens. Going from a digital point & shoot to the 5000 was a big enough step for me right now. lol Once I become more familiar, if I do, I'm going to look in the pawn shops for equipment. As long as I know what to look for, which I don't at this time, it will save me a lot of $$. You can get really nice camera equipment for a fraction of the retail cost at a pawn shop.

I can't help but to chuckle at this. I didnÂt even remember who you were until until your last sentence, and then I recalled another thread where someone was hypersensitive and then the name clicked. YouÂre so touchy, Bill. I hope that you are not referring to me, I was in total agreement with you in the last discussion you were part of. No, not everyone is out to get you, or argue with you. You seem to become insulted whenever others state their opinion. I donÂt believe anyone is here to argue. Oh well is rightÂmuch love to you Bill. I believe the SIGMA 70-200 f2.8 was the last lens inquired about. It is a fraction of the cost compared to the canon. . Is 200mm going to limit the op? Maybe, but to a very, very small degree. From what I can tell of her previous shots, she is not in the nose bleed section, nor is she selling her pictures to SI. True, the 400mm would be a lot better, cÂmon - 6.5K? I guess thatÂs why they get paid to be at the game and I pay to watch.

Got up at 5:30, darn race didn't start until 8, they said 7 on one of the news websites. Had to get there early enough so I didn't have to park too far away, people everywhere all over town. Hot already but not as bad as I thought. Here I am telling you what to do and my photos did not turn out too great. I shot sports mode, buildings & background were bright but runners too dark, many blurry or out of focus, many good and fixable. I am going to have to process each one that's worth keeping (shot 594) and brighten most of them up with shadow highlights. Good learning experience. I shot most in sports mode which kicks into burst, but I'm not happy with a lot of today's because I can't change any of the parameters in that, picks too large apertures and too slow shutter speeds and continuous auto focus I'm not used to at all. It is hard shooting a sea of people, never been in a situation quite like that before. I'm thinking about what to do next time, couldn't figure out how set burst so I could use tv mode standing out there with all those people, should have shot tv mode, 1/800, ISO 800, partial metering. Maybe. I'll have to get some help with that. Coming home, I was trapped in by lots of street closings, had to go way out of my way to find a way out of that maze, lucky I know my streets around here, only one way out from where I got myself. Filled two 1 gig flash cards in about 1/2 hour! Good timing though, a few stragglers were coming up the hill when both cards were full. I'll wait for your photos. Yours will be easy. I know people steal photos. I haven't caught anybody doing that to me yet, maybe mine aren't that good? Somebody in France liked my peacock java applet and wrote and asked, I said ok. What do I care? I just don't want people making money off my work. Will address some of the other issues later. Too bad you have to break up your lily garden, that would be very hard for me to do. You must be either a specialist or have special lilies and maybe getting older like I am? Granny out shooting a race. Hah! I wonder which lens would be best for that? Used 50mm with a different race, much smaller, this time went with the 28-135 so I could zoom. 70-200 not wide enough even if I had it which I don't. That is a conundrum for sure since I was so close to most of them standing on the sidewalk, brushed by a few, tried not to get in their way. Then some other photog gets in my way. There now you taught me something about bracketing. I've been doing it the hard way. Shoot, look at histogram, set exposure comp or some other adjustment. I'm going to try bracketing and quit on the bright end like you do. So thanks for that tip! I dared not shoot that race in AV (my favorite) because with the early morning bright light and shadows, it would have picked too slow a shutter speed. Frustrating. THIS is where I would like to have been positioned lol. She hadn't turned her camera toward the race yet, she had to swing it about 45 degrees to her right to be pointing at the runners coming up the long hill. I fixed this one a little. Later, Alice

That's a very nice camera. Before you ditch it, may I suggest that you take a beginner's course at a local trade/technical school. Usually, the tutition is low cost especially if you are retirement age. Our local trade school has courses as low as $5 for seniors. If you do not want to 'mess' with taking a class, work your way through the user's manual. There should have been one in the box. If you do not have a manual, very likely you can find one on-line using Google. Don't be afraid to take many test shots - its very inexpensive. Unwanted shots can be erased and the memory card used again, in fact, you can selectively delete individual images - the card system will automatically re-use space occupied by deleted images. Since you will be making a lot of test shots just to see how various adjustment affect the image, I suggest that you invest in rechargeable batteries and a charger. For starters, get two set of batteries. One set can be recharging while you use the other set. When I go on trip or on a camera hike, I have at least a fully charged battery in the camera and at least 2 sets of charged spares. Rechargeables do have a limited number of cycles and I have yet to see any meet the advertised amount (that was acomplished under ideal conditions). The lithium-ion batteries are pretty good at holding charge; Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) looses charge at about 10% per week, and some self discharges faster. There is a "hybrid NiMH cell that is much better at holding charge. Now that you are set up with recharging capabilities, shoot away knowing that it will be very inexpensive since the batteries can be refreshed. This is one of the big advantages of digital cameras. You can take lots of pictures and toss out the bad ones without wasting money. If your camera has an 'auto' selection on the mode dial, you can set the dial to this selection and use the camera as you would a simple point-and-shoot camera. Now, we are going to check on another feature. Look in your manual to see if your camera has a 2 step shutter button, or with the camera turned off, simply push the button down and feel for the two detents. if it is there, you will feel a small resistance when the button is half way down - that is the first detent - and then with the botton fully down, the second switch is activated. The purpose of the first detent is to engage the auto-focus feature. Hold the button at the first detent until the lens has focused and then make the exposure by pushing the button all the way down. By default, the camera may have been shipped with the auto-focus feature set to "continuous". That means that the auto-focus is active all the time and places an extra drain on the batteries. I recommend to dig into the setup menu and set the auto-focus to operate only when the shutter button is pushed to its first detent. This will give you a longer time before the batteries run down. However, you can operate in either mode - If the auto-focus feature is set to intermittent, be sure to allow time for it to focus before making the exposure. It is a good practice to make a habit of pausing the shutter button at the first detent irregardless of which mode the auto-focus is set at because if you are swinging the camera around, the lens is continually changing focus as it picks out objects in its view. It will attempt to focus on the nearest object that fills the largest portion of the view and if it is still hunting when you click the shutter, you may get an out of focus picture. It is difficult to fully automate the focus function, however digital cameras made in the last 2 to 3 years are doing a creditable job of it, but automation can not cover all situations and on those occasions, you will need to set the camera to manual and take over the focusing. I'm guessing that 90% or more of your needs can be met by setting the auto-focus to intermittent and remember to allow time for the focus to work before making the exposure. There are some instances when auto-focus fails or is slow. The auto-focus works by 'seeing' a hard edge or a sharp change between two details. When it can't decide what to use, the old Nikons would default to a near infinity setting. (I do not know 'what the newer Nikons do.) One of the cases where auto-focus fails is a sky view with no clouds or soft edged clouds. A default to infinity usually is ok for that case. Auto-focus becomes slower as the light dims and can be quite slow in low level lighting. If you plan to do after dark, long time exposures, you'll likely need to set the camera focus fucntion to manual and take over that function. It wouldn't do to have the focus feature to keep changing focal length while for searching for something to home in on. The thing to do is to dig into the depths of your manual and find recommendations for this case. Play with your camera before selling it a low price. Its a good camera and I hope that you can enjoy it.