My backyard!

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

Here is a quick snap of what lies in my backyard.

I'm not camera ace yet so I'm sure I've made some pretty classic newbie mistakes so lemme know if you notice right away how I could have taken a better photo.

There's a bee photo in here for good measure, too.

Edit: the foreground is daaaaaaaaaark. Too small of an aperture, maybe? Bad lighting? I clearly did something wrong.

[stipud]

In the first, your background is way lighter than the foreground. Try using flash, without modifying the exposure time... your teensy weensie little flash may barely have an effect, but it will be better. It adds more light to the foreground so it's less silhouette-ish. I believe the landscape portrait mode will do this automatically, even under light conditions.

In the second, I recommend you try switching the AF point to dead center. That way, you can half press and hold on the item you want to focus on, then move and frame it the way you want. So you would be able to get a much better focus on the bee, instead of using the automated multipoint focus, which seems to have picked up the flowers instead (you'll see where it focuses by the red dots that flash in your viewfinder). I almost always leave my AF at center for this reason... it should focus faster too.

[mr tibbs]

That first shot can be difficult. I would try to take multiple shots using different shutter speeds and then make my adjustments after with some photo processing.

The second shot I think Tom has it nailed. It looks like your auto focus was shifted off of the bee.

Were you shooting in manual mode or using an auto camera mode?

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

Thanks for the tips.

I was probably shooting both in Program mode but I'm not certain. Could have been in either Av or manual for the first. I guess I could verify that.

AF was definitely set to all points... and I was wondering why grabbing focus on the bee was so damn hard! Ha! I'll have to remember that one.