Some good advise!...I never use tripod, I like to be free in movement, ...to the question about turning off IS when on tripod,.. as soon you're screwing the camera on the tripod, the screw going into the camera base switches off IS...this what I still remember reading manual long time ago, I think?? Your pictures are pretty good for a start with using 250mm lens. To make your bird look larger you really have to fill frame in your camera, so either get 400mm or 800 lens, or get closer to your subject. I use a 200mm lens with converter, still very handy and flexible,...I would hate to use a big gun like 400 or 800mm, have tried the 400mm but took it back, about 2 weeks ago have tried the new Professional body with video, think it was 5 D Mark 2, 21 megapixels,....I didn't like it, but now I'm trying to get closer to subject with camouflage / blind. One from today...Yellow Warbler Konrad

When I lived in San Antonio one of the high schools offered a continuing education class in welding. It was taught by a shop teacher and all the classes were in the evening. We used the equipment to several types of welding, and we were able to pick our own personal project if we wanted something done at home. We didn't develop any real skill, but we learned how to use the equipment. Bruce

Quote:"your area is so full of wonderful subjects" Years ago I drove 18 wheelers covering the entire U.S.A. Every year Labor Day seemed to open the flood gates as people began their annual vacation migration in search of something to see. But what I found most amazing is that for every person that heads out of your community there is another traveling vast distances to come see your town. To that end I used to offer people a challenge. Take out a road map of your state and locate where you live then take a simple drawing compass and scribe circles at 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 & 50 miles. Now locate all the communities within those circles and contact their chamber of commerce for information on sites to see in their community. You will find a vast wealth of sites to see, all within a short one hour commute of your house, and many of them are absolutely free of admission. Now consider how much money you can save in fuel, food and lodgings and you have just saved enough to pay for that camera or new lenses you been dreaming about, not mention that you can continue that project year around instead of trying to pack it all into two weeks. Now in regards to how long it takes to edit 1300 photos. Actually the problem is not as difficult as it might seem. I began my interest in photography with a Pentax Spotmatic, which was the first 35mm SLR to have a built in through the lens light meter. (The Nikon F offered a light meter in an accessory viewfinder and Canon had not yet got into the professional SLR market). Lenses were manual focus, manual aperture and exposure was controlled by manipulating the shutter speed and lens aperture to center a match needle indicator in the view finder. As if that was not enough, in those days most films had an ASA (ISO) rating ranging from 64 to 325. I can vividly remember when AGFA introduced a 1000 ASA B&W film for the first time, and Fuji film almost took over the industry with a 500asa high resolution color print film. In those days getting the correct exposure was at best a bit iffy so it was common practice amongst the pro's and advanced amateurs to use a technique called "Bracketing" In fact, Bracketing is an automatic feature on most DSLR's but most people fail to use it. Bracketing is a technique where you shoot one frame at the measured exposure, then a second frame one f-stop under and a third frame one f-stop over. We could then push or pull an additional f-stop in the darkroom if need be. In those days there was no "live view" or "instant replay" so that is how we could insure we would have a usable print when we processed the film. I still rely heavily on that technique when i am out in the field where it would be difficult to return and try again, especially when shooting birds or wildlife where the shots cannot be repeated. When shooting macro shots of plants & flowers on a windy day I often set the mode to "Sports" which is shutter priority mode keeping the shutter speed as high as possible. This has a two fold effect. 1. By keeping the shutter speed very high it assures stop action when the subject is moving in the wind and 2. it keeps the aperture open, limiting depth of field, which generally puts the background out of focus giving a nice soft pastel background that does not detract from the subject. Back in the days of film bracketing the exposures was rather expensive when you considered the cost of film and processing, but in this age of digital when i go in the field I carry 5 or 6 SD cards and 5 sets of batteries so I am not concerned about wasting a shot or two if I can be sure that I will ultimately have the shot i want. In addition, I generally do not take just one shot, but rather I like to shoot a series of shots that show different aspects of the subject. By example, I am attaching a series I took of the evolution of a Dandelion. My brother said i was as crazy as an outhouse rat for taking pictures of dandelions but I like the outcome. DANDILION PLANT IN BLOOM DANDILION BLOSSOM DANDILION IMMATURE SEED POD DANDILION MATURE SEED POD DANDILION MATURE SEED POD DANDILION SEEDS

First let me say that storing the dough overnight is NOT a good idea, although I was still able to work with it. It seemed to have even more moisture, and I had to add quite a bit of flour to make it workable. Also, I learned that you have to store each gnoccho separately - if they touch each other before being boiled, they glue themselves together. Some of mine did that, and so I ended up forming them with a spoon and treating them as dumpling. They reminded me a bit of matzo balls, but that was okay. After I boiled them, I put them in pasta bowls and microwaved those to make sure they were done. Then I put grated Asiago cheese on that (it looks like bits of linguine in the photo) and then put tomato sauce over that. All in all, it was a laborious process, and I still have half of the dough in the fridge, for future use. I absolutely loved the kale salad and will make that again! I used Parmesan cheese and instead of lemon juice, I used a teaspoon of aged Balsamic vinegar (for sweetness) and 2 Tbsp of white Balsamic (for tartness). I increased the amount of garlic, and I used three cayenne chilies, seeded and minced, which I added to the garlic/salt paste in the mortar. I did not add black pepper, as the cayenne gave it just the right amount of heat. I used a very good olive oil (that I bought in Paso Robles), and that made a big difference. This is now one of my favorite salads! It is so much easier to make bread crumbs instead of croutons, and I used whole wheat bread that I baked myself for the crumbs. Kevin said he's had this same salad in Culver City but the restaurant sometimes adds broccoli and tomatoes to it! He thinks it is better without the broccoli, and he tells the restaurant to leave the tomatoes out! When I made gnocchi before, I made a smaller batch. They were a bit better this time, as I was more careful with the dough, heeding the warnings in this thread. While my potatoes were fairly dry, I do think that baked potatoes would work better. However, steamed potatoes were extremely easy to peel, once they cooled. The skins came off like very thin paper with no potato loss. Thanks again for the kale salad recipe! Lars