Critique more Phals

[silken]

Melissa, another tip is to remember not to let your camera meter the lighting from an extremely dark or bright area of the flower or any subject. This will cause it to over or under expose somewhat. If possible look for a medium bright part to set your exposures on. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the 18% gray concept, but a brightness equivalent to that is best. Using +/_ exposure compensation helps if you need to adjust for very dark or bright conditions. Trying to get a camera to see as we see is quite a challenge

[tropterrarium]

I have had my digiSLR also for relatively short time, just about 1.5 years. I hear you re the initial frustration, and longing back to film (I used a Contax RTSIII last; I still do 4x5 view camera with sheet film).

My experience is, that digital permits me to make finer, incremental adjustments because of the instant feedback on the camera. An average good image on film from back then is worse than a decent shot on the digicam. Have a critical look at your old slides with at least a 10x loupe, and I think you will agree. [There still are great shots from film, but the average keeper is worse, IMHO]. It took me about 2-3000 frames to get reasonably comfortable with the digicam, so shoot away!

And the camera doubles as a note-taking tool. At the end of a series, I take a picture (poor snap shot) of the plant label, so I know what I photographed. Love it!

The Sony Foveon sensor is very interesting for getting around the Bayer pattern. Never worked with one or examined files side-by-side.

Re tripod, you can stabilize it by weighting it down. Either by hanging weight from the center column [wait for the weight to be still before pressing shutter], or by putting bags on the legs. Bogen legs are good. I have a couple of Gitzo CF legs, one with an Arca B1 ball head, the other with a Linhof Profi II. Had both for years, and they are great performers.

If you don't have a cable release, you can also use the self-timer. Often the self timer also locks the mirror up when starting the timer, so upon exposure, there is no vibration introduced due to mirror slap.

Re exposure compensation, the old greycard works fairly well. Adjusting deviation from neutral grey based on look of scene is more difficult because of the newer, more fancy metering systems. Adjustments work fine in center weighted mode, but may produced odd results when matrix metering. There it is just a matter of pressing shutter, see what's coming out, then adjust. Later delete the poor exposure.

I was quite surprised by the performance of the auto white balance on my Canon (5DmkII). I also have a Minolta Color meter II, and I like the AWB results generally better than when I set the color temperature manually based on the Minolta meter readings. That was quite a revelation. So there are some things to be impressed by at the digital end.