Yes it has that feature. On the menu, look at the custom settings (pencil icon) and on mine it is in the red A section. Look at a1. AF-C priority. the choices are focus or release. set it to release and you can shoot all the blurry pictures you want.

Too bad they are so expensive. I used to use my Cokin P series quite a lot. I liked the way the polarizer worked in the back slot in the holder. Of course you can buy the same polarizing film the filter makers use from Edmund scientific. when I worked on product photos a lot we used Edmund for all kinds of things for specialty light manipulation.
http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/polarizers/circular-polarizers/circular-polarizers/88093

Something that a lot of photographers need to know anyway... how they work. http://www.edmundoptics.com/technical-resources-center/optics/introduction-to-polarization/

Not everyone likes the same things. I like taking pictures of pretty ladies beach or not.

Not sure where to start here. I said if i found some demo pages i liked i would post them. If the technical aspects of making the photo are of any interest these might be helpful. Your camera gives you very little control over anything but the ISO sensitivity settings, so knowing this might not be of much help, but might explain why you may want to favor one mode over another or adjust ISO to coax a particular aperture or shutter bias out of your camera.

This might be a good one to start with. i like the narrative and the diagrams, but the example images seem a little weak. http://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-ultimate-beginners-introduction-to-exposure--photo-3028

A little shorter, but the images seem to prove points a little better to my way of thinking. http://www.exposureguide.com/exposure.htm

yet another approach, i like the water bucket analogy. http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-exposure.htm

For those that prefer a video, this page has one that is not bad. http://petapixel.com/2014/06/12/back-basics-learning-exposure-triangle/

They are different. If i find a good demonstrative page i may add that link later.

In the quick look i took at the modes available on your camera, it seems you can pick an ISO or over/under exposure compensation for those times the meter is fooled and flatly wrong. It is strange to see a camera with nothing but automatic exposure modes where you can't even manually select shutter OR aperture in any of them.

I would still try the "panning" exercises i pointed out in an earlier post. Try the Scene mode for sports, and the Program mode and see which one gives you more keepers among the shots you try with the panning exercise. this afternoon helicopter ride is still in broad daylight so you should be able to do about anything with the ISO set to 400 without the shutter speed dropping too low to avoid blurring the images due to motion. If you get an afternoon shower and the clouds linger a bit, you might raise the ISO a bit, but i would not raise it higher than 800. As you crank up ISO, it is like turning up a radio louder and louder. At some point you start to get noise and distortion that ruins the sound quality, the same thing happens to image quality. Lower ISO is usually better. Anything up to 400 seems to make little difference. that transition between 400 and 800 you sill start to see a change in the image quality. above 800, it degrades even faster.

This i what i got for the D5300. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003L1ZYZ6/ref=sr_ph?ie=UTF8&qid=1407706793&sr=1&keywords=nikon+remote I like it better than the official Nikon part.
what makes it a hassle is that it requires that you have to put the camera in a specific mode so the infrared sensors on the camera body know to listen for it. Read your manual about this. it won't stay on remote standby forever and all the time it is in standby it is eating up batteries faster a wired remote is better if you are going to use it a lot.

For a wired remote this is the official Nikon item: http://www.adorama.com/INKMCDC2.html
Here is a knock-off that allegedly does the same thing: http://www.amazon.com/Pixel-Shutter-Release-Control-compatible/dp/B005TCJJ9M/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1407707047&sr=1-1&keywords=nikon+wired+remote+D5300 for no more difference in price than this, i might just get the Nikon part.

Here is a gadget that might be the lest of both worlds. wireless, but it is independent of the camera so you have a wireless trigger for a device that plugs in like the wired trigger. http://www.amazon.com/Satechi-WR-M100-Wireless-Control-compatible/dp/B001PQ37YO/ref=sr_1_49?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1407707641&sr=1-49&keywords=wireless+release+d5300 i have a gadget similar to this for the D200, neat as it sounds, it has been used maybe a few times. i use the $9 wired trigger often enough i have nearly worn the finish off the plastic.

Sounds like they nailed it already. looks like you were in focus priority release. if it is not happy with its focus it won't fire.

It looks like the kit lens that i used with my D70 and then my D200 for years has some internal parts wearing out so it no longer achieves sharp focus. I look at my 30-40 year old Nikkors and they work fine, but this one is all plastic and only lasted 9 years. I recently picked up a D5300 with a 18-55mm vrII collapsible lens. It does not look like much but that sucker is optically outstanding. MTF charts make it look like it is perfect at about 50mm. so here it is at 55mm...

Download this and zoom in to see what is inside the blossom

(Download)

I just looked it up. Canon makes a 28mmm 1.8 and sigma makes a 28 and a 24mm 1.8 for similar prices. $450 to $550. that is certainly not an insignificant expense, but it seems like a person would be able to use those quite a bit. of course the 50mm 1.8 is $125. seems like a relative bargain, but then again it is not a wide angle lens and needs no exotic designs to make it work.

If all else fails, a 50mm f1.8 is relatively inexpensive and will extend your low light capability a lot compared ot your zoom. if canon has a low to moderate cost 35mm f1.8 that might be the ticket. 1.8 to 1.4 is just a third of a stop, and that *might* be significant at times, but a third of a stop more than doubling the cost seems like a mighty big hit for a third of a stop.

i got a great deal on a Nikon AW110 this year for my wife to take on a missions trip. the main thing she liked about it was that she could offload the images t her phone and in some of the places she was visiting they had internet access and she could then post those pics to their project facebook page. She has enjoyed it and the wifi features are actually useful. the battery life is not too bad, and the GPS is fairly responsive and includes a map that at least includes major highways.

the zoom is limited, the flash is weak, and it could be more responsive. it is not a DSLR i have to keep reminding myself of that. for me price point and durability were more important than absolute image quality. even so, we have seen nothing disappointing about the images and she uses the camera indoors quite a bit. The VR works pretty well and the movie modes are decent too. the controls are maybe too simple. the main thing i could see annoying SLR users is that there is essentially no fully manual mode on this camera. you can still control a lot and manipulate the exposure but you pretty much do that by setting one of the more controllable modes and then adjusting with exposure compensation. the exposure system is good enough that i can't recall having to dial in any compensation. but we have only had it 6 months.

i am not terribly familiar with that camera or lens, but i have shot a lot of wedding receptions and dinners in venues that felt like they were as dark as the inside of a whale. Is this a place you are familiar with? do you know the management well enough to ask them about turning up the lights or arranging the table to be in a part of the restaurant where the lights could be a little brighter without disturbing the other patrons? Are there any tables near windows? If possible a window and an earlier start time could make all the difference in the world.

Otherwise, the method on the camera will me messy. probably select aperture preferred mode. set the aperture maybe one stop down from wide open and pray. dial up the ISO until you can get shutter speeds around a 60th or faster. at that point you are on the very edge of hand holding even if your subjects did not move. so i would suggest a monopod to walk around the table and try to get tight shots of clusters of just a few people at a time and hope they will hold still enough that you can get reasonably clear shots. then maybe have a tiny tabletop tripod so you can be in a couple of the shots yourself. and you can aim the camera down the table to get some overviews at a tighter aperture and ask people to try to hold still.

I would set a manual white balance (check the manual) and if you don't do it already, have the camera record raw+jpg for this event.

All this of course would be trivial if you had light.

If the 6D holds up well at 3200ISO, this might just work out. It may not be ideal, but do you think a smallish LED light panel like you use with a video camera might be used without causing too much distraction for your mother or the patrons? That too might be subject to feedback from the management. In addition, have one of the other siblings or nieces/nephews shoot video. there are a lot of camcorders out there that do well in low light where SLRs struggle. that way you hedge your bets on getting memories recorded.

Best of luck.

The idea of the super moon is about proximity to the earth and the tiny apparent visible change in size. (you can measure it but it really is not that much different.) What does become more apparent is how much light is reflected back to the surface of the Earth. That makes more difference to the visual aspect than the actual increase in size.

My luck has been pretty good shooting by the sunny 16 rule. the incident light falling on the daylight surface of the moon is from the sun just like shooting flowers in your yard. Bracket a little if you need to. I like ISO 200 at f8 and 1/1000 second shutter. and i use a wired release with a 2 second delay to pre-open the mirror before the shutter fires and then there is less vibration to absorb at that moment in time.

That is Sid. he is 7 months old and 15 pounds already. Our "bovine" tomcat. :wink: he is always up to something. i got that picture because i was playing with the camera and he wanted to play too. Curious and clumsy. i would post a dog picture but the golden retriever is a pest that likes to lick lenses, and the German shepherd does not like her picture taken. So i have none of them with the new camera.

I need some clarification.
Cable release? Do you mean the old flexible cable that screws into a tapered threaded socket over the shutter button? Or a wired electronic release which is much more common amongst digital cameras.

Remote shutter release? Wired remote? or one of the infrared remotes that consumer cameras frequently use.

For my Nikon D5300 i have a third party clone of the ML-L3 remote. This one happens to be one of the "Amazon Basics" branded toys. it was $8 and has a much better feel to it than the Nikon remote with the hard plastic button. For my D200 I have two wireless remote sets and a generic wired trigger. the wireless systems have been used a handful to times because they are a pain to use since the camera requires a separate receiver be attached to the 10-pin accessory port. For this reason i use the handheld wired remote a lot.

Other brands may vary, but what i have experienced with Nikon is that a wired remote is always ready to go. you plug it in, the camera recognizes it and each time you push the button it fires the shutter. just the thing for firing a camera on a tripod with a super-tele lens. Zero lag time and no tricky modes to set that time-out in a few minutes. The D5300 also allows you to fire the shutter via a smart phone or tablet. this is sort of a neat feature, but it is occasionally temperamental and since it invokes live-view, the response time lags a bit.

The wireless remote is a pain on the D5300. you have to set the drive mode to remote so the IR sensors on the body are ready to listen for the signal from the little remote emitter. it is also directional and mildly temperamental.

Performance with different brand names? depends on the style of remote. the old "cable release" style was subject to some quality issues. and if they were ever allowed to get wet and rusted, you had a mess the didn't work at all. The wired remotes? if you get a tricky one with the interval timers and all that junk on it, then i would say brand matters. if it is a simple pushbutton, then it is hard to justify the extra $30 to Get a Canon or Nikon sticker on a button on the end of a wire. for the cheap wireless remotes? those little keyfob things, knock-offs seem to work fine. at least for Nikon and Olympus.