Moving water.

I have studied camera settings before. Before I had a camera that could do anything, I learned all about ISO and aperture and shutter speed, and what they did. I've forgotten every bit of it. Makes sense, because I learn best when I do hands-on things, and I couldn't really do anything hands-on without a camera that was capable.

Anyway, I want to learn. The auto settings - I HATE THEM. Not because they take bad pictures. On the contrary, they're fine pictures. But I can't do anything if I want the skin tone to be a bit lighter, if the shadows are just a bit too dark, if my daughter's white sweater is looking "glowy" I can't do a whole lot. I just have to take what I get. I can change the exposure on one auto mode, but it really doesn't work quite how I want it. Of course that was one of the main reasons I wanted a camera like this in the first place, so I decided that even though it's a bit overwhelming, it's time to start learning the settings forward and backward, till it's natural to me. I wish I had more time to do it, but being a mom and wife, it's honestly hard to do. (As I type, I hear a very loud crash coming from my daughter's room...) But my first goal: get one of those cool pictures of water, where the water is completely soft and smooth looking. It's not something that you see in real life, because...well, that's not how our eyes perceive motion. I've always thought it looked cool in certain pictures. I must warn you, the pictures are NOT pretty. My goal was to find moving water, and it WAS moving water, so it worked for me. I'll work on the "pretty" part later.

This one is f-18, 1 second exposure, ISO-100, at 50mm. In case you cared. So this is my long exposure, but not long enough. It sort of looks more like someone took a smudge brush in Photoshop to it, not the pretty, smooth water look that I was going for.

This one is just on auto - which ended up being f/2.8, 1/60 sec exposure, ISO-100.

Alright, so I did not get my desired effect. Not even close. The exposure time was still too fast, which I knew it was, and I knew I wasn't getting it how I wanted it, but...I didn't know how to make it longer than it was. I later realized I can go to a 30 second exposure. Uhh, yeah. About that. I'll try again soon...although, I don't know if you can do a 30 second exposure in the middle of the day. I'm not sure if my camera would be capable of that, or if I would need a special lens or filter or something. But I think a couple of seconds would suffice, especially if it was faster moving water, which I wanted in the first place. Either way, I know I can get the results I want with what I have, I just need to try again.