kja

helen - pretty! gila - love the heart piper - thanks for the info!

Don't be adding a teleconverter, imho, if you are already having problems. Learn to nail your shot with what you have and then add stuff. TCs are great but they can reduce AF speed and otherwise impact your shooting. Focal length is not the problem here, technique is and the only solution is practice and tweaking

rally - excellent flying shot! anniek - love the light in his eye! piper - awww, tug of war with mama, too sweet Is losing the coat typical of a mama dog (mine have all been fixed so no puppies for me and I don't know what's normal)

crazycresties - love the fly! anniek - so sun-kissed! 26/52 - defining "happy snap"

Aww look at Lola! 183/365 July day 2 happy ... it's winter so I'm walking instead of driving for errands!

snooke: yes, it's the little * button on the back of the Canon bodies. How exactly to change it will be in your manual as it's in the menus. I change it so my AF is on the * and I think it's in the orange menus. I don't seem to use my 50mm for action, but I do use other primes (love my 135L!). Zooms are awesome for action and I seem to use the 100-400 and the 70-200 mostly from a quick look through LR.

The first thing I notice is the insanely wide open aperture. Remember that the wider your aperture the LESS of your subject will be in the plane of focus - and with a moving subject, that makes life very tough indeed. Check out one of the online DOF calculators and plug in your 50mm and distance and look through the different apertures. You might be surprised at how little you are giving yourself to work with. As you get more confident and better at the basics, then start opening up again. Up your ISO, get a little more speed, get a smaller aperture, keep on trying. I love using the back button but sometimes actually find that I do better with the shutter release button for fast stuff. It varies for me, guess it's a mood thing or something LOL I wish I had exact answers but it's really just getting out there and doing it!

I'd check out the tokina 11-16, too. Not only does it do everything the Siggy 10-20 (bar those last 4mm) does, but it rocks in low light, too. It can have some flare issues in full sun so you need to be aware of that, but it's perfectly usable in daylight

The 10-20 is more practical(it's fabulous), the 8-16 is definitely a specialty lens. Both are good - depends on your needs

tlc - great! 182/365 - Even my Girls are starting July with a happy

Don't know how fast she's going in the first pic but damn! looks like she's flying! Love it

Wohooo!! Time to play!

Hmmm, I don't know. I've only done it a couple of times and once it said it didn't go to facebook but it really did. Check out Lightroom Queen and Killer Tips for Lightroom - maybe it's there. I'm running LR3.2 and LR3.4.1 and it worked from both of them. Are you sure you have it set up properly? Maybe try again and see - sometimes shutting down and restarting is all it takes to boot the buggies out.

hehehe that happens to so many of us! Thankfully it's an easy fix. Catalogs are simple but there's really not much reason to use multiples, I've found. I export a finished project as a catalog with copies of everything but that's just a redundant backup system that works for me. Day to day, everything is dumped into the main catalog and I have LR set up to back up on closing so it's easy and I rarely think about it. tlc - you're missing one of the really nice things about LR: being able to sort and flag. I import everything in LR and start tagging with my chosen flags, colours, stars whatever. An X on stuff that's crap. Import is done, I hit the reject flag and it brings me all the Xs and I delete them and I get on with editing the ones I like. I can immediately pop keywords on images or the whole shebang at that stage, too. Doing it this way lets me go to one source in the future - LR - instead of having to go to the folder to find the image I might want and then importing coz I'm no where organized enough to totally be sure I'd selected every image I really liked from the folder the first time LR tip: if you have your caps lock key on LR will automatically move to the next image once you have marked it. Very nifty

oh my doesn't he look like he has his Mr Grumpy Pants on!!

Love the chicken :D 25/52

Loving all your doggie shots, Everyone! snook - I totally love that you take the time to personally comment on so many

176/365 - Boof thinking it's a big jump Canon 1DIII, Canon 24L 1.4 II, ISO500, 1/320, f2.0

Aargh! You tease! I thought you were ready to buy ;)

Host them somewhere - flickr, photobucket, your own domain or similar and use the IMG tags to insert them. resize at export: 650 to 900 pixels on the long side seems to work best for the most viewers. I save at 68% jpegs and get files with maximum of 200ish kbs so still small enough for those on slow connections to not get too miffed off waiting

2nd tree shot is lovely! I wish you'd put in full sized photos (650-900 pixels longest side) though, coz I hate clicking ;)

It'd be easier to email the PRESETS instead of the RAW and let her play in a free trial version of Lightroom ;) Don't forget, making your OWN presets in LR is dead easy and all presets can be a starting place for you to then tweak an individual image. yes, lightroom rocks

tlc - 175/365 - dinner

You can also check out BH - $629+$48 shipping 4-6 days delivery. They also have 3 and 5 year coverage plans for extra $$ - go to the right hand side of that page to see details on the options. With 3 year plan + shipping = $748.25 US FR510 - saves 10% on shipping costs at DWI (may be expired). To get one, wait a minute or three after you put something in your cart and check out (before entering payment or address details etc). with shipping (no discount) and 3 year plan $766 AUD Aussie dollar is trading at 1.0178 in real terms today which makes the US version $735ish in Aussie dollars (plus whatever your credit card may slug you). yes, I'm putting off work LOL (and I just laughed at the other place coz they start at $761 AUD without shipping etc!)

Hehehe