Antiquesilver...I imagine that ISO is not changeable when in any semi automatic mode. The camera wants to do that for you so it will most likely be automatic. However you should be able to raise the EV just one notch up to +0.3, or get a stronger light bulb. Also try substituting the thin cloth with white tissue paper or tracing paper. The cloth might be cutting out too much light. I know what you mean about too strong a light blowing out the detail on the silver pieces. But keep experimenting to get the right combination of camera setting, light and diffusor. If you are interested in reading photography books, I can highly recommend this one "Light - Science & Magic. An Introduction to Photographic Lighting."" by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, Paul Fuqua. There are detailed explanations of setting up tabletop lighting with a whole chapter dealing with how to photograph metal objects. You might want to have a look in your library or bookstores. The ISBN (I have the 3rd edition) is: ISBN-13:978-0-240-80819-2 , published by Focal Press. Tutorial number nine will be a few days late this week. Probably have it ready for the weekend since we had a lot to do this week, including rescuing our new cat from a neighbour's locked backyard LOL. (All turned out well there.) SharonCb

Sharon, while I haven't been posting directly to your photo tip threads, I've been following them avidly. I so appreciate all the effort you've gone to to explain in such an easy way so many aspects of taking good [better for some of us] pictures. The last week or so I've been very busy organizing and then hosting our family reunion at a local fancy diner and have not had a real chance to digest the latest installments. The macro stuff interests me very much. I've tried to use my macro recently and found when I did the camera refused to take the picture?? Odd. LOL.. I'll figure it out but I suspect I'll have to dig through the manual to see what the problem is. Your post makes me suspect it has something to do with the camera not being able to focus on what I'm trying to do or the distance, or something..heh.. and it won't fire as self preservation. Smiles. I'll figure it out and then be back to digest more of your post. Btw, I got a tripod for my birthday! Yay.. I relative I had staying with me for a while apparently absconded with my last tripod. Grrrr... Needless to say I'm looking forward to using the tripod to work on some of your 'lessons'. Thanks for all your great work on our behalf.

Quote:"your area is so full of wonderful subjects" Years ago I drove 18 wheelers covering the entire U.S.A. Every year Labor Day seemed to open the flood gates as people began their annual vacation migration in search of something to see. But what I found most amazing is that for every person that heads out of your community there is another traveling vast distances to come see your town. To that end I used to offer people a challenge. Take out a road map of your state and locate where you live then take a simple drawing compass and scribe circles at 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 & 50 miles. Now locate all the communities within those circles and contact their chamber of commerce for information on sites to see in their community. You will find a vast wealth of sites to see, all within a short one hour commute of your house, and many of them are absolutely free of admission. Now consider how much money you can save in fuel, food and lodgings and you have just saved enough to pay for that camera or new lenses you been dreaming about, not mention that you can continue that project year around instead of trying to pack it all into two weeks. Now in regards to how long it takes to edit 1300 photos. Actually the problem is not as difficult as it might seem. I began my interest in photography with a Pentax Spotmatic, which was the first 35mm SLR to have a built in through the lens light meter. (The Nikon F offered a light meter in an accessory viewfinder and Canon had not yet got into the professional SLR market). Lenses were manual focus, manual aperture and exposure was controlled by manipulating the shutter speed and lens aperture to center a match needle indicator in the view finder. As if that was not enough, in those days most films had an ASA (ISO) rating ranging from 64 to 325. I can vividly remember when AGFA introduced a 1000 ASA B&W film for the first time, and Fuji film almost took over the industry with a 500asa high resolution color print film. In those days getting the correct exposure was at best a bit iffy so it was common practice amongst the pro's and advanced amateurs to use a technique called "Bracketing" In fact, Bracketing is an automatic feature on most DSLR's but most people fail to use it. Bracketing is a technique where you shoot one frame at the measured exposure, then a second frame one f-stop under and a third frame one f-stop over. We could then push or pull an additional f-stop in the darkroom if need be. In those days there was no "live view" or "instant replay" so that is how we could insure we would have a usable print when we processed the film. I still rely heavily on that technique when i am out in the field where it would be difficult to return and try again, especially when shooting birds or wildlife where the shots cannot be repeated. When shooting macro shots of plants & flowers on a windy day I often set the mode to "Sports" which is shutter priority mode keeping the shutter speed as high as possible. This has a two fold effect. 1. By keeping the shutter speed very high it assures stop action when the subject is moving in the wind and 2. it keeps the aperture open, limiting depth of field, which generally puts the background out of focus giving a nice soft pastel background that does not detract from the subject. Back in the days of film bracketing the exposures was rather expensive when you considered the cost of film and processing, but in this age of digital when i go in the field I carry 5 or 6 SD cards and 5 sets of batteries so I am not concerned about wasting a shot or two if I can be sure that I will ultimately have the shot i want. In addition, I generally do not take just one shot, but rather I like to shoot a series of shots that show different aspects of the subject. By example, I am attaching a series I took of the evolution of a Dandelion. My brother said i was as crazy as an outhouse rat for taking pictures of dandelions but I like the outcome. DANDILION PLANT IN BLOOM DANDILION BLOSSOM DANDILION IMMATURE SEED POD DANDILION MATURE SEED POD DANDILION MATURE SEED POD DANDILION SEEDS

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