50mm lens

I absolutely love my 50mm lens I got for my camera. I use it almost all the time. My other two lenses are collecting dust inside my camera bag. I never thought I would fall in love with a camera that had no ability to manually focus. By this I mean, I have to move myself closer or farther away from the subject. It's not just a twist of the hand anymore. The other day, I was sitting in the truck and this interesting bug landed on the antenna. See how the bug is in focus and the entire background is blurred? Love it!

I also did the same thing while we were investigating milkweed that same day. The wind was blowing and making for all kinds of challenging shots, but this was one I liked. Again, the milkweed is in focus and the rest of the background is blurred. That's the beauty of the 50mm lens!
If the subject you're shooting isn't really far away from the background (depth of field), then the picture won't be as blurry. In fact, the closer your subject is to the background, the less blurry. I also like to shoot in AV mode where I can control the F-Stop. Depending on how much light there is, I like to move the F-Stop all the way down to 1.8. If it's too light, then I have to move it up higher to maybe 2.5.

So now that I have started mastering my camera, the next thing I really, really want is Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. But those are anywhere from $125-300. It sure would be fun to have something like that though to edit these pictures in. I've been lucky enough to play with Adobe CS4 and Lightroom on some free versions. They are both fairly tricky, but so fun to play around with.