ooooo a snack rowrrrrrr ! ^v^

Down girl!! I have to fight the cat to keep him away from my bunny friends. I'll fight you too if I have to.

lols okay i love his grumpy look though !! ^v^

Me too. There's another one that's much nicer looking. I'll post a picture of her for comparison. they're easy to tell apart too. he has that black spot on his forehead and ring around his nose. And she has a sweet look and no black on her face.

awww cute !! ^v^

Lovely bunnies! Almost as lovely as me!

GET THAT BUNNY SUM CARROT CAKE!

It could only help!!!

if all else fails... give it cheesecake

Or whatever it decides it wants! This doesn't look like a rabbit you deny anything to!!

why are bunnies in Cali so grumpy...? ;o; Why can't they be chill and smooth like Bugs Bunny?

I'm not grumpy. And you damn well better not say I am, or your history!!

... grumpy >u> *giggles all the way to the safety of my secret hidey hole!*

*comes after you with a backhoe just in case she needs help getting you dug out*

Very nice picture, hehe I posted my own cute sleepy bun bun picture earlier =P

Thanks! I'll have to go look at it.

He looks like he wants to gnaw your kneecaps off.

I like that attitude in him. We have a big tomcat here who tries hunting the rabbits nearly every day. If he ever catches this one I hope it kicks his ass!!!!

Grumpy cat meets her match.

I love watching the rabbits in the waterpark at night. The night before there were eight of them in just one small section of grass. Of course as the headlights hit them they tried to scatter, two of them jumping straight up into the air. Most of the ones around here though are grey.

I AM TOUGH BUNBUN! BRING IT, HOOOMAN!

Zakly!!

'What?'

'What are you looking at?'

'WHAT? Do I have something on my ear? Can't a guy eat in peace?'

'JUST PISS OFF!'

GET OFF MY LAWN YOU NONE FURRY GIANT!!!

You read his mind!

Yep

That's a grumpy bunny!

On the side -- you might want to dial down image sharpening in your camera for better results.

He sure is. Been chased by the cat too many times.

I actually sharpened it a little in photoshop to bring the bunny into better focus. He was the tiniest bit blurry to me. Still just learning the camera though. I spent about 3 or 4 hours yesterday reading the book and trying out different things. I have a lot to learn.

These ones all look grey till you get a close up like this and see how many colors there really are in their fur. I just love watching them!!

It's just a suggestion, but you might want to consider applying sharpening only in certain zones -- the "sharpen" filter essentially cheats and adds black and white stripes along (what it thinks are) edges; while this may work very well on larger objects, on small, densely packed objects like grass it creates a lot of busy visual noise. This doubly applies to objects that should have low contrast -- like the grass in the background, where the algorithm adds those lines completly needlessly.

P.S. Is the lens you have a Canon EF-S 18-135 f/3.5-5.6 IS or IS STM? Anyway, I took a quick peek at dpreview's lens database (available here: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/lens-compare?lensId=canon_18-135_3p5-5p6_is&cameraId=canon_eos7d&version=0&fl=135&av=8&view=mtf-ca ); it suggests that you should avoid 85mm area and keep the lens stepped down to f/8 for best overall sharpness.

Hmmm......I never thought about just sharpening certain zones. That's an excellent suggestion. Thank you!!
My lens is the regular IS not the STM. But yes, the EF-S 18-135 3.5-5.6. I haven't tried using my own settings yet. I'm not conversant with F stops and shutter speeds yet, though I hope to learn. I'm a total newb when it comes to anything but a little point and shoot like my sony cyber Shot, but I want to get into some better photography. I'm just using some of the different pre-sets that manage all that for you. I have a 55-250 IS Canon lens coming too. Also not STM. I'm hoping to get some good nature shots with that as well.

You should get acquainted with shooting in aperture priority mode, the "A" on your mode dial. This mode makes you select the aperture appropriate to conditions of the photo you want to take and the camera will pick optimum shutter speed to go with it. It's also ideal to help you learn how aperture and shutter speed interact and when to best compromise one in favour of the other.

"Av" not "A"... it's been years since I actually looked at a Canon camera.

I'll do that. And by the way, I really appreciate the tips! I'd like to get to be able to handle my camera well and get really good pictures.

Oh! On an electronic camera, there is the third dimension to the "correct exposure" space - sensitivity of the sensor. It's also the source of most unexpected quality tradeoffs -- If you have a tripod, taking photos of the same object in a fairly dim light with sensor ISO progressively higher will show you a lot about how your camera operates.

Your camera should have a dedicated ISO button -- this means that you'll be able to use that knowledge quickly and efficiently in the field, too.

It does. I saw and read a little about it but haven't gotten quite that far in my experimentation yet.

And a final bit of post scriptum: There is a bit of a trap in all those "Beginner friendly" automatic modes: the low cost gear, especially lenses, is the most constrained in terms of parameters, quality and precision -- something that these automatic systems rarely take into account. In short, the cheap gear is, ironically, the hardest to get to get perform really well, without spending a lot of time to learn it's quirks.

None of what I got is of the cheap gear variety. Maybe not the very best they have, but definitely good quality. No knock offs or anything.
Even after only a couple of days I'm already seeing that making your own adjustments can be much better than relying on the automatic modes. I just need to learn them and get some experience to make them work the way I want to.

I know it costs a lot.. unfortunately, in minds of camera makers, this is the "cheap" gear.

P.S. Third party lenses are acually worth researching -- Labels like Sigma offer very high quality glass often at much lower prices than equivalent from Canon themselves.

Well whatever. It's a big step up for me anyway. And I'm not planning to become a professional, so I think it will do fine for what I want.

I think with the 55-250 lens that is on it's way, I'll probably have all the lenses I want. But if I do find that I have use for more in the future, I'll keep that in mind.

BTW I hope I didn't come off flippant with the 'whatever'. I was referring to what the camera makers think. I know what you mean about there being much better and more expensive equipment out there, and that mine isn't that high on the scale of quality photographic equipment. It's a heck of a lot better than the Sony Cyber Shot I've been using though, I can tell you that! XD
I tried using the Av setting today as I was out but couldn't see a lot of difference in the outcome from one setting to another. Possibly it will make more difference in a different kind of setting than outdoor long shots.
I really appreciate you taking the time and trouble to give me some tips about camera related things, and would welcome any more you might care to send my way. If you know of a good reference that might further help me understand the uses and interactions of ISO, aperture control and the other controls, I would love for you to tell me. Meanwhile I'm having fun playing with my new toy and getting a nice picture here and there. :)

Yes, I got your meaning!

My point was to warn you that while all those automatic functions promise "great photos, every time", they just don't always work all that well with "entry level" hardware -- especially lenses. I remember myself being in this situation when I got my first dSLR -- sometimes I would get gorgeous photos, sometimes in seemingly same condition, the photo would be awful.

Now after I've had taken thousands of photos -- through that "entry level" and other gear -- I know that set's limitations and work around them. The big problem is that it sometimes takes a long time to fiddle with all the controls to get that workaround punched in.

Ironically, with my "semi-pro" gear that is simply fantastical for manual control, I can actually switch to full-auto and go shooting with confidence that it *will* get things right 99% of time.

I've already seen that happen just in the last couple of days. Two shots that should be the same on the full auto setting came out vastly different and I could not figure out why.

I found a Canon site with a bunch of short videos on using the EOS Rebel last evening and one of them showed how to use the Q button to access the quick change menu and change nearly all your settings quickly and easily from one screen. I like that! Though for right now having manual control of aperture and if I want, of ISO in the Av mode seems like a good choice for a lot of the situations I will be shooting in. I guess it will just take a lot of shooting and trying different things out to find what works best for me all around.

In ideal conditions, you should not see any difference in settings at all.

That said, here's a quick intro into how camera program modes work.

To get a correct exposure, X amount of light must hit the sensor. This amount is a product of three variables: lens aperture size, shutter speed and sensor gain.

Lens aperture is an artifact of lens construction and it's range is most constricted. The lower f-stop number, the more light the lens gathers.

Shutter speed is pretty self-explanatory: it's amount of time the sensor is exposed to light.

Sensor gain, traditionally called "ISO speed" is basically the amplification used to translate minuscule signals that the sensor generates into image data.

All three of the above carry some side effects:

The aperture controls how much of your scene will be in focus and how sharp things will be.

The longer your shutter remains open, the bigger chance things will move -- including your camera. Even with "image stabilisation" systems, it's not advisable to hand-hold shutter speeds lower than 1/30.

The bigger the sensor gain - and therefore less actual light - the more noise will affect your image. This noise is unavoidable, inherent in the sensor's construction, but it's level remains constant (well, it changes with temperature, but it's not something you can really control), so putting more light - and lowering the gain - makes it less visible.

The camera, based on it's secondary sensors, picks the value of X, in units called "Exposure Value" or EV, and uses a set of built in preferences, picks the best mix of settings.

I hope this helps; if you have any questions, let me know!

Yes, thank you, it does help! So if I'm getting it right, a lower ISO with a faster shutter speed is better. And aperture will affect them both when they are automatically controlled and you control the aperture. So on Av I should set my aperture so that the automatic value of ISO is lowest and shutter speed is highest to get the clearest picture with the least amount of noise?

That's the general idea!

That said, I'd try to get the aperture to f/8 first and then only deviate from it only when needed. This is the "sweet spot" for your lens and in good light it should not make big difference. (f/6.3 is only 2/3 of an EV away from f/8, anyway)

In "pro" photography, you would use low f-stop numbers to intentionally blur away parts of the scene; unfortunately, this effect is very hard to achieve on entry level hardware, as it directly depends on sensor size (and large sensor cameras are expensive to ludcrously expensive), lens focal length (the longer, the more pronounced effect) and f-stop (the lower the number, the stronger the blurring is).

Okay, thanks. I'll try f/8 for some shooting and see what happens. Would that work well for both my 18-135 and my 55-250 lenses, or were you talking about my 18-135 only?

18-135. The other one will have different behaviour and different sweet spot.

Thanks! You are a super sweetie for helping me out like this! *hugs*