Focus is Hard to Achieve

Oh, the title of this post could relate to so many things, but I'm actually referring to focus in terms of photography. So I've spent a lot, probably too much, time over the past two days reading about aperture, shutter speeds, exposure, focus, composition, etc.

With a fancy camera now, I almost feel like it is cheating if I use the auto settings, so I've spent the last two days exploring the manual functions on my camera, especially in terms of aperture vs. shutter speeds. My lenses typically only achieve a 3.5 on the aperture side of things, and I would love to add a lens that gets down to at least 1.8. (The lower the aperture setting, the more shallow depth of field you can achieve - in layman terms, that means you can more easily blur the backgrounds.)

Also, I'm finding that you have to be ridiculously steady to achieve good focus. Seriously, the minutest movement ruins the whole picture.

It's kinda funny... usually when you shop for digital cameras, you focus on mega pixels and zoom capabilities. With an SLR, it's all about aperture and shutter speeds. And really, it's the lenses that achieve that, not the camera itself. Looks like I'll need to put myself on a lens budget.

So I came across this blog today and I have to say, I love her photography style. So whimsical. I was seriously intrigued for hours reading about her and her husband adventures and admiring her photography. I would love to achieve photos half as good as hers.

Anyhoo, here are a couple shots from today I'm halfway pleased with. All straight out of the camera for now.

This is probably my best shot of the day. I like how the tree lights reflect in the window.

This shot would be more interesting if the ornament wasn't in the middle of the pic.

Radar's cute, but this picture needs brighter exposure.

No, I didn't mean to focus in on "The Act of Marriage," but I'm overall pleased with the exposure and composition of this picture.

Oh goodness, this hobby is going to take a long time to perfect. I guess, in the end, what I really want is to be able to take decent photos to preserve family memories. This journey should be interesting.