THIS SNOW IS GETTING PESKY--

These two images were shot late this morning and are identical; except, the upper one was shot at a shutter speed of 1/8th of a second and the lower one was shot at 1/400th of of a second.  The slower shutter speed recorded the falling snow flakes in vertical streaks while the faster shutter speed effectively stopped the motion of the falling flakes thus rendering them more sharply.

Additionally, the slower shutter speed left more light into the camera during that exposure so the aperture had to be reduced to prevent over exposure  It was at f/32 for this shot.

Conversely, at the higher shutter speed substantially less light was allowed into the camera so the aperture had to be enlarged to compensate.  It was at f/4.5 for this shot. 

The view is toward the pine woods on the east side of my pond and was recorded with a 70-200 mm zoom lens at full focal length (while both the camera and the photographer were hiding under a large, golf umbrella on our upper deck.)

Nice images can be obtained by shooting from the comfort of indoors through a window pane but usually some sharpness is lost because the window glass is usually inferior in quality to the camera's lens.

The automatic mode of your digital camera will make very nice pictures indeed, but fiddling with the manual settings will help you expand the creative use of your camera.