One more thing. In digital photography, there is NO PICTURE. Your camera simply stores a foot thick book of 0s and 1s that tell your computer or printer or projector what to put in each pixel. When you shoot RAW you get the full edition with every possible combination of 0s and 1s. Jpgs are the abridged, paperback version using a much smaller set of instructions for your computer or printer or projector.

Processing RAW in Lightroom or Photoshop is completely nondestructive. You can put it back to the way it came out of the camera with just one click "Restore Camera Raw Defaults". I think the best advantage of RAW is its dynamic range. You can knock down overexposed areas and bring up shadows easily. As others have said, You do the initial adjustments in RAW (takes about 10 sec.) then save it as a jpg or open image in Photoshop for more adjustments and saving in any format you want. Copy the jpg files to a thumb drive and print them at Wal-Mart if you want to. Like I said, no matter what you do to the RAW file, you can always go back to where you started with just one click. A RAW file is like a box of clay with which you can make anything you want, over, and over again.

To bleep out something like a license plate or yourself in a window, you can use the Patch tool in Photoshop. You just free form draw around the part you want to remove, then drag it to another part of the picture that looks better. With your plates, you could drag it to say, the hood of your car. If you wanted a Santa instead, you would drag it to a Santa on your porch if you had one. The destination image replaces the original image when you let go of the mouse.

I really, really like the new Adobe PS CC (Creative Cloud) at $9.99 per month including Lightroom. This is a special introductory price; regular is, I think about $20. You download the software just like any other with the difference that as new versions like (CS4, 5, 6, etc. come out you get it. I love the new auto verticle (straightening) in its PS Camera Raw too, because I use a 10mm lens on 99% of my real estate shots. Sign up at Lynda.com for a month ($25 mo.) to learn any software in depth which is what I'm going to do again to figure out Lightroom.

BS Public Relations, Central Missouri State University, 1974. Courses included photojournalism, filmmaking, news directing, etc. Back then, we shot everything BW and processed film ourselves. I'm not saying that formal instruction is not helpful, I just happen to believe that learning photography is similar to learning, say, golf. You can watch the videos, read the books, go to the gurus, but in the end, you have to teach yourself through trial and error. If you play golf you'll immediately get what I'm saying.

Paula, you don't need any more classes. You already know everything that you'll get at the local community college. Most importantly, shoot, shoot, shoot. The only way you will learn your style is to shoot. You're lucky that you have willing subjects to practice on, but that probably won't last long. If you want to shoot babies you could go to the local natural birth class outfit and offer to shoot for free. The dog/animal thing is easier, but animal coats are really hard to light, plus, you gotta get them off the floor or get down there with them, ouch! Listen to me when I tell you that you can't learn photography by reading books alone or buying DVDs. You have to shoot. When you have questions then Google it using key words like "lighting for baby photography", etc. Everything you want to know is already out there for free. but none of it has relevance until your camera has greasy wear marks and your camera bag starts to fade, and your tripod starts getting scratches, etc. You gotta shoot. Do it for free until your customers come to you and and say "Thank you so much, I love these pictures, you're not leaving until I give you something". After that, feel free to charge an exorbitant fee. But, never quit Googeling and YouTubing to keep learning. These UHH guys know alot too, though sometimes tedious, arrogant, and from time to time just plain wrong, everyone of them are true lovers of the art and science of photography, in my opinion. Bottom line, you need to get out into the scary public and shoot! Mogul's suggestion to shoot Humane Society photos is a great idea. Maybe, go to the local child daycare and offer to shoot kids for free, or whatever. Until you have knocked out about 3,000 frames and processed them, and really looked at them, and then answered your own questions by searching the internet for answers. You can do this, but given that you live in a small town, you don't want to act like a bigshot, hold yourself out as a pro, until you really are one. Believe me, when you are good, customers will come to you. That's been my experience, people call me, I never call them. You've got two years until hubby retires. You can learn everything you need to know if you start shooting now.

Paula, I fell into shooting top quality photos for real estate agents part time. I charge $125 for about 40 finished photos. However, it is very hard work in that the site shoot takes 2 hours and another 2 hours in photoshop. You could easily make $50k a year if you were doing it full time, especially if you had someone to help with the back end photoshop. On the downside, shooting real estate photos over and over quickly gets to be like factory work. I'm almost finished shooting a video course on how to do it, but if you are interested, I'd be happy to tell you what I know for free. Another area to look at is school yearbook and amateur sports team shooting. It's big money at $5,000 a day, but the industry is pretty much controlled by large companies. And, same thing, gets to be like factory work. There is a franchise called Portrait EFX, but they want $20k to get started; and they seem to have sketchy success. I'd be somewhat leary.

Thanks, I started out shooting real estate using umbrellas, but figured out that ceiling bounce was quicker and a lot better. Small rooms like bathrooms get a flash using a black 3 inch snoot that limits light to about a 3 foot circle on the ceiling anywhere out of sight of the camera.

I agree, ceiling bounce and wall or door bounce works great if you want to kill shadows. Actually, I usually use two flashes aimed at the ceiling about 6 feet apart to get the effect of a huge softlight. In this photo I used only 1 flash in the hall aimed at the ceiling straight over the camera but also stuck flashes in in the upstairs bath, hall, downstairs dining room, and I don't know where else, total 5 speedlights. Ceiling bounce rocks!

I think it comes down to the "look" of a 35mm or a 50mm as we have come to know in film and still shooting during the past 50 years. My thing is filmmaking. I got into the 7D a few years ago when the Indie film world jumped on the HDSLR bandwagon. I grew up using a 35mm camera as a kid, dark room and all, but drifted away to video using cameras like the Canon XL1s (porno camera) that had great image stabilization, auto focus, and auto everything else. Using the new HDSLR, I quickly figured out that I would have to learn 35mm lenses and bodies all over again. Actually, in retrospect, 40 years of casual shooting 35mm cameras didn't prepare me for using a still camera for video. Suddenly, shutter has to be locked at 50 (24fps) or 60 (30fps), auto focus doesn't work any more, and open f/stops give you a depth of field of about 1 inch which doesn't work well if your charachter decides to lean back in his chair. Now DOF and hyperfocal settings come into play. But, back to cropped sensors, the big problem for movie making is you can't get a real 50mm natural shot or a 35mm wide shot because you have to use wider lenses to net out. DOF and lens distortion is different. That said, I love my 7D and I guess I'll have to live with the disparity. I envy you still shooters with your Tv and Av and Auto whatever. HDSLR shooters for moviemaking are stuck with manual in every setting. Gotta say though, still shooting has taught me more in 3 years than I learned in 10 years of shooting video. Go, go UHH! You guys are great. I learn something every day that I check in and try to shut up and just listen.

Mr B, you and I agree. Guess we posted 1 minute apart. Love the 7D.

Yes and no. Check out this very informative article comparing Canon 5D MII to 7D. Especially note the side by side comparison when the 5D is cropped to match the 7D angle of view. Because the 7D pixels are smaller, the end result is 5D at 8.2mp vs 7D at 18mp.

http://www.ormsconnect.co.za/2012/03/image-quality-comparison-5d-mk-2-vs-7d/

I get the drift that he probably can't bring in lights as he is just a spectator at the event. I'll stick with set shutter first to capture motion, then f/stop to get exposure, then all you have left is ISO. If your camera does not have auto ISO then experiment up to higher ISO settings. Shoot RAW if you can. You'd be amazed at the detail and light that you can pull from a dark and dingy RAW original. That said, in dark environments, if there is action, you gotta go with shutter speed first. Don't let your camera mess you up. If you're going auto in dark environments then go TV set at enough ss to catch the action and the camera will do the rest to the best of its ability. Like I said, shoot RAW if you got it.

Gosh, didn't know you cared so much. Actually, your advice to Moonsey works perfectly. 50mm, f/1.8, at 20' gives you DOF of 3.3' on a cropped sensor, so subject focus shouldn't be a problem. Where Moonsey went wrong was ISO at 1200, not enough, thus, AV probably dropped his shutter speed to under 1/100. I don't know why you're stuck on AV; why not go manual at say, 1/250 at f/1.8 and let ISO float? And, yes, my suggestions were a bit of overkill, however, here are a couple of shots to illustrate that you need a steady camera no matter what. Both shots are at 1/250, f/1.8, ISO 2000 (auto) and distance about 4.5'. I purposely jiggled the camera on the second shot. Point is that you can easily get bad focus at 1/250, not to mention the head-on car crash math that states that two cars head-on at 50mph equals a crash at 100mph. If dancers are yinging while your shakey hands are yanging, you can get fuzzy. Additionally, regarding burst shooting, I just cranked off 15 high res RAW on a pretty average Canon 7D using a cheap ($25 Kingston 16GB 266x CF) no problem. I advocate just popping 6 or 8 frames anyway. Like I said before, I think Moonsey's problem was going AV with not enough ISO. His problem is not lenses. He should go manual with adequate shutter speed for this miserable shooting situation, no matter what lens or focal length, and let ISO float.

I shoot sports sometimes. Consider shooting sports style using settings others have suggested, but shooting fast jpeg bursts with single point autofocus aimed at high contrast areas like a dark jacket against a white shirt; pan with the subject's face when you can; using a monopod can gain one or two shutter speeds over hand held; and use image stabilization if your lens has it. Personally, I'd go manual at 1/250 to 1/400, aperature wide open, and ISO on auto. I think it is easy to underestimate the effect that camera shake has on focus. Hand held, you need 1 ss for every mm to get focus on a stationary object. Moving objects compound the formula. Shooting bursts helps avoid trigger jerk because your hands will stabilize after the first frame or two if you can get over the emotional baggage that you are using camera life at a high rate. And, you'll get shots that you could not get in single shot mode. If you can get 10 years out of a 150,000 exposure body, that's not too bad. You can't take it with you. Go ahead and burn it up at about $0.01 per shot. On the downside, you have to wade through a million pictures in post, all of them looking pretty much the same at first.