We are not only in week one of the class, but also in week one of my using a digital camera. This seems to be developing into an interesting adventure...at least for me.

The sun is finally trying to peek through today after what has seemed to be endless rain and gray skys, so I stuck my nose out on the back patio and decided to try some non-automatic settings. Here are a couple of the results.

Unfortunately, the weather of late has given my pansies a beating. There are at least small blemishes in all of them. New ones will bloom, but I went ahead and tried one today. Both of these images have been cropped and unsharp mask applied. Interesting how the flower appeared to be floating in macro mode.

Normally, I would have touched out the blemishes with the clone tool, but for this exercise, they remain.

Settings for the pansy were as follows:

Portrait Setting 1/125 - F2.8
Macros Enabled
No Flash
Evaluative Light Meter Mode
Resolution: Super Fine/Large
Size: 2048x1536

Resized, sharpened and compressed for webviewing 28% reduction JPG format.

[Note: I took the shot *sideways,* so the image needed to be rotated in psp7. I believe there is a way to do this within the camera which may be better, but I haven't gotten to that part of the manual yet. ;-]

This fellow lives right outside our back door and protects us from bugs. [yeah right] *He* is a rock we found by the lake that was purrrfectly split and begging to be painted with vicious teeth. The image is full view, uncropped.

ISO 50
TV [shutter speed priority] 1/125 F2.8
Macros Enabled
Evaluative Light Meter Mode
Resolution: Super Fine/Large
Size: 2048x1536

Resized, sharpened and compressed for webviewing 30% reduction JPG format.