Useful info, super innovation. Sure would be helpful if you'd outline the setup, the camera and control parts. Is your mounted on a rail? What lens and why? TIA

Evans was an American Indian, steeped in warrior ethos.

I'm new enough to photography to wonder if you suggested a ten-second delay because two seconds is not enough, in your experience? It has always seemed to be cutting it close, to me, at two seconds. I'm thinking I'd like the five-second delay on the D810 along with the vibration handling features of that camera.

Admirable DIY, MMC!!
The picture reveals tremendous plant detail.

Questions, please:
(1) Could you share some shooting data, esp. distance from sensor, key settings, lens, and body? (If it's in the download I don't know how to find it).
(2) Hyperbole or is there such a thing as 40 aperture for DSLRs? I have a couple of lenses that do 32.
(3) Is there anything inherently preferable about flash for this shot compared to continuous light? For example, I have a ring light but I've been wondering about ring flashes. I know the falloff in light is not a problem for several feet with my ring light, but have been cautioned that the Nikon flash options like R1C1 don't put out enough light for general purposes (and so I should get something like an Alien Bees 400).

Our house has 3 i5 processors (CPUs) -- not ideal. Today's i7s have more on-board buffer space than i5s. Faster than RAM, that alone is a reason to get any i7 instead of any i5. If PS and LR have repetitive calculations as I imagine they do, esp. for large .dng files, this is relevant.

I asked Microsoft Word's spell checker to find and fix each incorrect word. It found them all and fixed all but

According, research, university, important, without, and because.

It also snagged and suggested the correct solution for the improper split of "itself" into two words.

Word could easily correct the six tough words if the algorithm were extended to be suspicious of certain infrequent adjacent vowels and consonants. For example if I change the original incorrect aoccdrnig to acocdrnig, the checker can fix it. It looks to me like the spell checker needs to be updated to take advantage of the greater power of today's computers to quickly try more possibilities. On the other hand, some of these uncorrected misspellings are artificial and unlikely to be produced by a human, no matter how ignorant, no matter how distracted, and no matter how diminished in capacity.

[quote=u02bnpx]http://www.shutterbug.com/content/25-best-quotes-about-photography

Thank you, u02bnpx. Always good to get others' insights.
Two comments on the article you posted:

First, I'd like to introduce a set of photography quotes (http://www.prisedevue.com/francais/chapitres/info_pratique/citations.html -- there is some overlap with the posted article -- Adams and Weston) that is uniformly uplifting and life-affirming, for example: (1) "Life is like a camera: just focus on what's important and capture the good times, develop from the negatives and if things don't turn out, just take another shot."(2) "Photography is the only language understood everywhere." (3) "...photography made my life impassioned."(4) "...to be a photographer is a way to denote my joy at being in the world and seeing it clearly." (5) "...photography delivers visibility." (6) "Photography has made my life possible." (7) "...a marvelous excuse for trying to grasp an uncertain world." and (8) I photograph the stars like strangers and strangers like stars."

I recommend the insightful and witty comments of Benard, Topor, Ingres, Clergue, Sieff, Delacour, and Bouhat, in my URL above. Here's a teaser: "We easily spot the pro photographer among a gaggle of tourists -- he's the one hiding his camera."

Translations of Avedon back to English, above, may be a tad off, if you can find them in English, which I did not, except for #8.

My second remark is for those interested in Cartier-Bresson's post-surrealist approach to photography. The author of the posted 25-best article, Robinson, misconstrues the situation around the title of Cartier-Bresson's classic book. Robinson feels the English title of Cartier-Bresson's book is awry and unfortunate. Yet, the two titles nicely complete each other.

The English title is the essence of a famous French quotation that Cartier-Bresson features his book's Preface. The English title speaks to “what” Cartier-Bresson is pursuing, to his vocation within photography, to his signature -- the decisive moment. The French title, Hasty Images, speaks modestly to “how” the “what” emerges, via rigorously analytical technique.

Thank you, LoneRangeFinder.

Welcome, from another Texan.
Love your photo of oleanders!

A rail helps me two ways. One is to compose the shot, exclude everything, and include everything. With a rail mounted on a rail (or a four-way rail), you can go in small increments closer/further and left/right. Would be wonderful if there were a device to minutely go up/down w/o adjusting tripod legs or center pole.

The second thing I just now discovered, but need to try out more, is the interplay between the closer/further bit on a rail and manual focusing. There seems to be some overlap, and I sense there is potentially more precision.

I've tried and like the expensive Novoflex (rental) but am satisfied with the less aesthetic least-cost model, so I have two one-way rails with one mounted above the other. This could change as my skills improve.

My uncle had many difficult people to deal with while working. When he retired, he opened a bait and tackle shop on the side of the highway that goes away from the ocean.

I have two focus rails stacked on my tripod, so I can speak from experience with small-product shots.

One rail is for L-R, one for front-back. Front-back becomes up-down when my tripod's vertical member is flipped to horizontal. I find the small movements work very well in my large tabletop studio. In retrospect I would look for focus rails that move as much distance as you can find, to avoid having to move the tripod or the subject between stationary product shots.

At first, being uncertain of usefulness, I rented an expensive focus rail. This experiment showed that I needed to cover four directions, not two. The expensive rental item was much nicer than the low-cost, no-name focus rails I later bought.

For me, a "noob," the no-name pair's utility is the same and the feel is ok. The no-names are so cheap that you could buy one to try, rather than renting. Some of these rails go four ways but I did not know that when I bought my pair.

A variant of the focus rail is the copy stand for cameras. I just bought a copy stand. Why? For me, this stand more quickly handles a class of similar items I photograph (than a tripod). For example, all items in this class are 7" long,...

Some stands do up-down as well as L-R and front-back. These stands seem to be made for a tabletop studio. Some adjust by loosening and tightening a screw. Others are geared.

Impressive! !

Back to rule of thirds, why is the bird centered in your interpretation?
I'm new to photography, but I would reply to my own question that your result unwraps the personality of the creature and suggests who the bird is looking at, so the story is not about (forward) movement (into the frame).

Thanks much; didn't know.
I'm Prime and I'm Adobe CC
Gotta compare -- read about and test -- unlimited Prime to CC, which is limited to 20 GB, I think.

Software development realities can upend product-marketing launch dates; these replans can be costly as facilities and services may have been reserved. Adobe's product manager for LR probably could not know for sure when it will launch and what will be in it. In fact, I see indications there was a slip in March.

Still, a Dutch camera store's report of an April 21 launch for LR 6 is not posted right now (I checked.) but on April 3 Fuji Rumors echoed the Dutch date. See: http://www.fujirumors.com/new-lightroom-6-release-date-leaks-coming-21-of-april-for-e129/

Adobe labs has been known to post LR Prerelease Software Downloads for Lightroom and ACR. This has lately been for Lightroom plug-ins so it is not likely for LR 6. See: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/#digimg

Seven features of Adobe LR 6 are listed here. This latest set have been known for at least a month: http://www.canonrumors.com/2015/03/adobe-lightroom-6-information-update/

BTW, for Macs LR 6 needs "OS X 10.8 or higher."