Ugh

Oh, the frustration. It seems the more I learn, the worse I get!

Here's what happened today. I went to get the baby some clothes and left her on my bed. I came back and she was sucking her thumb so cute! So, of course, I ran to get my camera, and proceeded to take pictures which got worse and worse as I experimented. Today I was looking at the light meter and trying to get it right by experimenting with everything!

The only one where I actually GOT the sucking of the thumb was this one:

ISO 1600 F5.6 Tv 1/8

There was no light except my bedside lamp. So of course, it's horrible. Even at ISO 1600 I had to have such a slow shutter speed that there was no chance for a clear picture.

So, I opened up my window shades and got the 7:00 a.m. sunlight. I thought I should have been able to get a good shot, but no. I guess I was reluctant to put the ISO all the way to 1600, so I kept it at 800 and tried to adjust the shutter and f-stop. I couldn't get the f-stop right, so my shutter ended up still being too slow. Ugh.

ISO 800 F3.5 Tv 1/20

I had to put the baby back to bed before I got the picture right, so I used Jeffy next. I wanted to get a shot of him with his beloved blankie. It took me a while, but I finally got some goodish pictures once I gave up on ISO 800 and just went back to 1600. I don't know why I was able to do it with a faster shutter for him. Maybe the angle of the shot, maybe I let more light in the window. Who knows. I wish he had a little twinkle in his eye. I need another light source. I thought the lamp would do it.

ISO 1600 F4.5 Tv 1/100

I doctored the blankie one a little to make it sort of look antiquey while still retaining the color of the blankie. Again, no photoshop right now, so it's the best I could do at the time.

ISO 1600 F5.0 Tv 1/125

HOW do I get a good indoor shot?? I still feel like I'm not taking any better pictures than I did with my p.a.s. camera.

ALSO, new question, why do I not have total control over the aperature? Sometimes I can only get it down to 4.5, but in some of my pictures it's at 3.5. Was that when I was experimenting with a different priority mode? I'm not sure. But why can't I do it in full manual mode?

Also, I think I need a new lense. Matt tells me there is a good one for low light that's pretty cheap. That's what I need. I thought I should learn the ropes before getting some nicer lenses, so we didn't get the image stabalization lense right away. And that's probably true. I'd probably be more frustrated. Let's see what I can do with what I've got first.