Ha! Love the contextual “in the wild” shot.

Excellent piece. I actually considered switching over to aperture priority mode, but I’m trying to force myself to stick with manual as much as possible for now. It results in a bit of frustration, but I feel like it’s the only way I’m really gonna learn at this point (though I admit I often start off in full auto mode just to get a general idea for what will work in whatever environment I’m in).

For those of you reading, I had to take two more shots at f/11 before the exposure was right. First I tried to correct it by doubling the ISO, which helped a little but not enough. It wasn’t until I slowed the shutter speed down to 1/8 of a second and put the ISO back on auto that the pic came out okay.

The camera chose ISO 1600, so I guess to get it down lower I’d have had to choose an even slower shutter speed or used a flash. I wanted to keep things simple and was using a tripod anyway so I didn’t bother, but it’s something I’ll keep in mind for the future when I might not have such a controlled environment and/or multiple options.

Many thanks to Daniel for all the tips & for getting me to do a useful exercise!