On this post I wanted to cover the subject of macro shots, you know those rediculously close shots of a subject displaying high levels of detail, and often having a shallow dof (see previous post). As a fan of photography and an extreme amateur, this style of shot has been long adored by myself but, until recently, I had been unable to manage even a mediocre shot. Upon a suggest from a friend, I invested in a cheap tripod, just to give one a whirl and see what kind of results I could get with this additional tool. I noticed the difference in many of my shots immediately, not just in clearity of the actual image, but in the slowing down to set up the tripod, I had a few moments to think about what I wanted to focus on as the subject of each shot. That said, I will make a note here, I personally feel that composition is my weakest point in my shots, a subject I look forward to addressing at a later date. Back to the unfolding tale, I used the tripod on every kind of shot I could think of, but especially on manifesting a descent macro shot, which I used the cheesy subject of flowers, because they are both beautiful and interesting in a macro environment. I found that my wife could do macro shots without use of a tripod and she has an interesting perspective on shots, so I thought I would try to mimick her results, though I did require the use of a tripod. I took several shots of her flowers in various lighting conditions and different settings with my camera to get the results I'm showing here. I even tried using my old Canon Powershot SD400 to see if I could get similar results, (see EXIF) data on my shots for further details. I was so surprised by the results, I was as giddy as a school girl crushing on the new handsome boy in class. After a lot of work, I found for my camera a custom white balance in the light I'm shooting in works best for color, while settings include an f/3.5 stop, the macro/supermacro shot (depending on what I want to capture), no flash, and aperture setting mode are my preferred settings. As I develop, I would like to switch to the manual mode setting, but this requires adjustments for ISO and shutter speed, which I'm not keen on currently - I like using a fixed ISO 64 or ISO 100 settings to reduce the amount digital noise in the shot, but will begin to adjust these as my skill improves. Well, that about covers the subject of macro shots from my perspective, there is a lot more to talk about, but I figure you don't want to know all the details, if so, post a comment and I'll answer as best as I can; otherwise, I think I'll cover night shots and setting shutter speeds on my next post.