vikkiolds

<p>Kerry, I have put that 100 2.8IS lens on my wish list. It looks awesome.<br> <br /> Jochen the tripod did help but as you mentioned panning doesn't work so well for what I was trying to do. Moving my aperture up a few stops got me almost to where I wanted to be.<br> <br /> Sorry it has taken me so long to respond. I've been studying everything all of you have mentioned and have learned quite a bit. Had to come back here several times to really get it all to sink in.<br> <br /> I am embarrassed to say when I viewed the video about recomposing I missed some very important points. One of them, the most important, is that you only get one main focus point unless there are other things at the same distance which explains why the grass blades have some focus. The parts that were in focus were at the same distance as the dandelion. For some reason when I watched the video I got the mistaken impression that if I set focus on one object and then recomposed that both subjects would be in focus and I would also get a nice bokeh for the background because of the aperture setting. Of course I have learned now that is not the case.<br> <br /> Recomposing is for setting focus on your main subject and then composing the final image with the subject for the rule of thirds or at least recomposing to balance everything in the full image nicely.<br /> I thank you all again for taking the time to explain and I'm still practicing on all the things you've said.</p>

<p>Thank you Jochen and Dan. Yes, I got my terminology wrong.<br> First it sounds like I should be using a tripod at f1.4 and not handheld and it sounds like I need a subject that is not influenced by wind/movement when attempting to shoot at that aperture. <br> I was under the impression for some reason that increasing my shutter speed would make up for camera/subject movement and didn't realize that it wouldn't help with such a wide aperture. <br> I'll look up AI Servo AF in the manual, do some reading on that today and I'll get deeper into the AF system to learn more about setting other AF points. <br> I will practice with both of your suggestions today. Thank you again for such detailed answers. They make sense and are extremely helpful.</p>