@Lars, up early or going to bed late?

I'm up early because I have a stomach flu, which I've had for the past three days, and I have to get up to go to the bathroom frequently. My brother came down with it yesterday. I fasted for two days but made some soup yesterday, which has irritated my symptoms.

So sorry Lars. Dry toast and tea with ginger...

I'm almost out of bread for dry toast. I need to make some ginger tea for Kevin because he has been nauseous. I keep ginger in the freezer.

Lars....I hope you & Kevin feel better soon.

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Taken with my cell phone, on zoom.

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Annie...your bird has no feather detail because you need a "good" camera.

Feel better Lars.

My shell plant.

Only four months to go.

Nicole, I have a new canon sx70 hs and I have been very unhappy with the autofocus which never seems to be quite in focus. And so far, my playing with manual focus, I find controls not fine enough to bring in a sharp focus easily. Very discouraging. Not sure if it's the camera or the operator...

Lars I hope you and Kevin feel better very soon. These are just a couple visitors I get everyday. I think of my brothers Mike and Bart everytime I see the cardinal. He has a female with him also.

lars, that sounds awful. hope you are better soon!

pippin was rather indignant that frank took her spot on the couch. usually when this happens, she will stand at a window and bark. frank will be compelled to jump down and investigate whatever "it" is out there at which time pippin will saunter over and take back her precious spot.

Sorry to hear you and your brother are sick, Lars. You making ginger tea reminded me that years ago, when I was pregnant with my son, my mom sent me a jar of pickled ginger for my morning sickness. "Morning" sickness that was all day long. Hope you both feel better soon.

Smoky Pinnacles near Crater Lake.

Mushrooms

Lars I hope you and Kevin get well quickly. We had a flu and it took quite a while but we are both feeling better. Dry toast was a saving for us.

@annie....it's the camera.....we need to talk. You have such a good eye!

Feather detail aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way to his butt!

Mural on a new brewery that opened recently. Very representative of our city.

Lars, hope you and Kevin are better soon. No fun to be sick. We’ve been iced in for way too many days and it is treacherous just to walk outside our house. Better yesterday and today but still very cold.

Get well wishes from me too, Lars

Birds are hard - they never stop moving, and often don't stay long for you to get another chance. I have a lot of slightly blurry photos of birds.

Flowers are easier 🙂

Hibiscus

@annie, can you shoot with a smaller aperture giving you a greater depth of field?

I suppose I could if I could figure it all out jrb. The whole point of the point n shoot camera is to not have to futz with all that stuff. I have an iphone 15 pro which I LOVE. It is point n shoot and it's clear and it has lots of easy to adjust setting that yield a terrific result. The only reason I got the canon was that it can go up to 65x zoom which I wanted for taking shots of distant animals, but so far the results have been most disappointing. And all that futzing means the animal is long gone by the time I get it figured out.

Once you take it out of manual mode, there are various "priority" settings such as shutter speed, but then you have to manually set all the rest and it's complicated how to do all that, and if it's not right, then you get nothing. Most of it is I'm sure that I don't know what I'm doing. I really need to take lessons with someone who knows how to operate the camera and then I'd know for sure if it was the equipment or the operator.

Is there an indicator on the viewfinder to let you know when it's in focus? It took me awhile to learn to be patient about that - you depress the shutter button halfway on my Nikon and it will show a red line around the area if it's out of focus, green when it's in focus. It also has some auto settings for different types of subjects - I sometimes use the sports setting for fast moving subjects.

The manual for my camera is like 500 pages, but I've managed to get through some of it 😁

My dad was a photographer - even taught it - and I took photography in college, but that was when it was all film.

P.S. The thing I love about digital photography is there's virtually no limit to how many shots I can take while trying various settings - that and the ability to edit seemingly terrible photos into something good.

@annie, I hear you. We have Trumpeter Swans on our lake today for the first time in ten years. I took this picture with my 13 Pro Max at the greatest magnification. Not very sharp. I was too lazy to get my Nikon, 500mm lens and tripod out in sub-zero weather to get a decent shot.

A 300mm fixed focal length lens is fine...I do own a 600mm, now THAT is a beast to take anywhere. You need a tripod for sure and for long exposures...a remote shutter switch. There just is NO quick way to get the kind of photos YOU want to LOVE ON unless you have the right equipment....my cell phone is fine...but it's not a GORGEOUS shot...only average.

It would surprise me if your iPhone didn't have a photo mode that gave greater depth of field and blurred the background.....maybe try a portrait mode, or experiment with other modes. I have an iPhone SE2, which doesn't have a fancy camera, so I'm limited with my iPhone and use my Sony mirrorless more. However, this was taken over 2 decades ago with a Minolta film camera.

The longest week of my life. Made it through the storms, plural, without freezing to death, without losing electricity, without freezing pipes, without losing my life (our death toll is now at 25 for the storm in Tennessee, from the storm). I did slip and fall down the last three steps of my front porch, and bruised more than my ego. But I made it through. Today, as all the snow is melting, others in Nashville are having ice dams, but my neighborhood is so old, we all have overhangs. So we are not suffering that, but having a contest to see who has the longest icicles. Maybe three feet? It's too hard to get up there and measure it.

ETA: just saw it from a different angle. It's at least 4 inches across

The icicle is the only I can see in the surrounding area that is still hanging.

And they've upped the number of deaths up to 34. Wow

TV, I've been playing a lot with all those settings in the iphone to much success. It's the canon "real camera" I struggle with. I think part of it is the intelligent stabilizing in the iphone really adjusts for the shakes vs. the canon which doesn't.

" intelligent stabilizing in the iphone really adjusts for the shakes vs. the canon which doesn't. "

I hear you! I've got an intention tremour and need a tripod if I'm using my Sony, or even my iPhone if it's something small and precise. But it still offers so many more options that allow me to do something like playing with light painting for last week's challenge. I'm actually going to stop travelling with my Sony for that reason, and I think my next phone will be a model with a better camera.

@Toronto Veterinarian.....

This little bird is waaaaaay up in a tree. I cropped the photo. Can you see the detail your photo is missing? My lens has VR = vibration reduction. Prime lenses are just another animal....

nice feather detail!