Just Gettin Started

In starting to play with the manual settings on the camera that I have, I'm already finding that more aspects of the details make sense to me.  This gives me hope that I'll be able to grasp some of these complicated numbers and settings with practice in time.  For these first two pictures my test subject is my Australian Shepherd puppy, Moki.  She is pretty photogenic and she's adorable so there will probably be several images of her popping up throughout the semester.

With the first image, I changed the AV settings several times and eventually decided on F5.6 because it provided better color in the image given the indoor lighting I was working with; I also experimented with proximity and how close I should be to her.

With the second image, I changed to the Manual setting in order to select shutter speed as well as Aperture; after several attempts, I stayed with F5.6 and brought the shutter speed down to 1/30, which since I had put her to sleep by then while taking pictures, the shutter speed didn't need to be any faster than that in order to capture good detail and light and it gave the image a warmer and softer feel in it's color saturation.