I purchased my digital camera in October 2003, yet I must admit I have only scratched the surface of its various functions and settings.  For the first two years alone, I think all the pictures I snapped were taken in only two or three modes.  How pitiful is that?

Over the last year, I have finally delved into the manual (RTFM!) and discovered a plethora of neat goodies I could have been using for quite some time—but haven’t been out of sheer ignorance.  Um, duh.

Just today, I found the macro mode setting.  That could have been quite useful in many cases.  Whether insects or lizards or any subject taken in a close-up shot, the photographs I’ve captured thus far might have been better had I used that mode.

And what of the landscape mode?  I wonder how improved many of my “that’s unusable” photos might have been had they been taken that way.  And nighttime photos, and multi-focus photos, and…

I’m such an idiot.

But I’m learning.  It’s been in the last six months or so that I found the right mixture of toggles and switches (digitally speaking, of course) to take sharp photos in natural light (sans the flash).  Yet there are many pictures in my collection I now look at and realize how much better they might have been had I paid more attention to what the camera could do rather than leaping in uninformed and snapping away as I have done.  Oh well.  Live and learn.