great eye to see what the drops of water were doing to your daughter's image. incredible to see how in-focus she is through the drops.

my daughter has a nikon p500 with a 36x optical zoom and no shutter lag. for a p&s, you can't go wrong except that the screen does not articulate. if you had a dslr with an articulating screen like the nikon d5100, with their 18-200 zoom, you can set it on auto and use it like a point and shoot.

i think it's sorta like pornography. i can't define it but i know it when i see it.

cindy, the best portrait lens, according to your friend, is a 50mm prime. would that be the f1.4 or f1.8? i bought the 1.8 for budget reasons, but i wish i had saved my pennies for the 1.4. it's steel instead of plastic.

corrie, i have a piece of unsolicited advice for you. don't shoot the wedding. wedding photography is a specialty that takes a long time to learn. take a look at some of the work by wedding photographers on www.flickr.com, particularly tracie taylor, who is one of the best. unless you want a bride chasing you with an axe, you would be nuts to take this on. you have neither the skill nor the equipment for a project as important as a wedding, which is a one-time deal. you can't reshoot if mrs. bride doesn't like the results. at least the catalog gig can be redone when you discover that you don't know enough about light to shoot the product.
this may sound harsh, but we all have to look realistically at our levels of experience. think hard my friend.

maybe i'm a nikon snob, but i would stick with the nikkor lenses. the two you have are nice glass and the tamron would be redundant. if anything, maybe try to sell the two you have and get the nikkor 18-200. it is my primary lens and does everything i want it to with no compromises. when i want portrait, i use my nikkor 50mm f1.8 and am lusting after a fast 85mm for additional portrait and for macro.

hand-held at 1/15! nice steady hands there. i don't skip my morning coffee for anything or anybody.

shutterfly, snapfish, et.al., are lower-end printers whose focus is on the 4x6 snapshot. i agree with others who recommend mpixx. they are a division of miller labs which is a pro lab i have used and they do wonderful work.

i tried this one and it returned an answer but it seemed to be about 3 times higher than i thought it would be. it all seemed a bit too easy.

this didn't work on my mac.

i've been thru every menu down to its depths at least twice and i don't find it. seems like this third party program is the answer. only problem is that it's a command line program like from days of dos. i use a mac. i'm sure there's a work-around but i doubt i have the brains to figure it out. i'll get a count from aperture as to how many images i have on there and then double it. that should give me a "close enough" to work with. thanks for your help.

i can get moon detail just fine at f11 @ 1/125. the problem is i lose everything else. if your shutter is too slow, the moon elongates. if the lens is too open, you get the blob. maybe it's time for subtle HDR?

my daughter recently bought a nikon coolpix p500 to take on her honeymoon. she got some great shots in santorini. it has a huge range from wide angle to 36x telephoto and that's optical, not digital zoom. it also got a great review in shutterbug mag, september issue i think. the big draw is no shutter delay. i'm pretty sure it was under 400.

um, i don't think so.

i used to shoot with a canon f1 with some pretty good glass; a 55mm f 1.4, an 80-200 zoom, and a 300 f 5.6. shot once with a borrowed 300 f 2.8 at super bowl xiv in new orleans when i had a sideline pass. awesome glass. but then my life changed and the camera went on the shelf until i got interested again living at the beach and watching some awesome sunsets. now i'm shooting with a nikon with an 18-200 zoom and a 50 f 1.8. lots of fun and i can shoot until my fingers cramp and it doesn't cost me a dime until i print. i'm all for digital and don't miss the film days a bit.