Okay, I finally broke down and bought myself the camera mentioned in the
subject header--B-Day gift to me, from me!

Anyway, as the instructions manual is about 270 pages of tech. goobledy goop

and I have no *real* photography experience, other than taking **** poor
pics with **** poor cameras, I am asking if anyone has any experience with
this particular camera and can tell me how best to utilize the macro
function to take epics of fly I have tied or will tie in the future.

I realize that I can set the thing in one of the two macro modes, but I am
still having difficulty getting it to focus head on to a fly-it blurs out
and focuses on the background? I am reading the instructions, but there are
many different ways to utilize the many different modes and settings. What
would really help is a tutorial that is specific to this camera and macro
picture taking--preferably taking macro pics of flys. Anyone know of any
such tutorials?

I have signed up with Digital Photography School
http://digital-photography-school.com/ , but I figure it never hurts to ask

the experts here!

Thanks!

Op
One method involves the
Use a tripod - a good one - and a cable release

Your exposure is determined by your shutter speed and the F stop or the
diameter of the opening in the lens
Both functions control the amt of light coming thru the lens and how long
it's opened
The smaller your F Stop (the lens opening is smaller as the #'s increase) -
the longer your exposure must be
But the smaller the F stop - the greater your depth of field
You cannot really handhold under 1/125 or 1/60 of a second
So you can opt for longer exposures with longer shutter speeds 1/30 or 1./8
(meaning greater depth of field) - because of the tripod and cable release -
you do not have to touch the camera.

Another method:
You may also want to "fool" the camera by changing your ISO setting and
making it "faster"

I hope that this makes some sense to you
The digital photo lessons are a good idea.
There are also several newsgroups for digital photography both SLR's and
point and shoot models like Roff where people will answer your questions
and some of the same insanity and flames also occur (on one particular
group)

Good luck
Fred
Who opted to buy the Olympus 720 another waterproof point and shoot because
the LCD screen was much brighter than the Optio.