misses Spring I love the colors on this flower.. - darkpen

Welcome, and nice photo! :) - darkpen

Alpha: The model I bought is a Pentax MZ-M.. and I'm not sure what you mean by 'more than one metering mode?' I just know it's a reflective light meter, no ambient mode. The manual just says I should use the compensation dial when I want to deliberately over- or underexpose a frame.. that each eV value I can select corresponds to a half-stop (so I can go 3 full stops over or under in half-stops). Doesn't give other recommendations or anything else, really. APFrey: Yes, that makes sense. :) And thanks for the tips. As it turns out, though, I got the roll back and most of the pictures are actually (IMO, anyway) pretty good.. just a few that didn't turn out right because of too much backlight, camera shake, etc. I'll post a few up after I catch up with a weekend of posts. :) I went to shoot pictures this weekend and tried to stay away from the compensation as much as possible, using only aperture and shutter speeds (even using bulb exposure mode for night scenes when the largest aperture and slowest shutter speed didn't read correctly). Trying to build some good habits and all. :) - darkpen

Thanks! loads up new browser window That site is bookmarked now, Rork. :P I'll go through it this evening, it looks really nice. I'll be experimenting this weekend again. I'm really enjoying this! :) - darkpen

Thank ye all kindly. :) It -is- cold out here! grin Actually, it wasn't too bad that day.. about 14F (-10C), and the day after that was 28F (-2C) (which is actually pretty warm for late January.. we usually start hitting the -4Fs (-20C) to -31Fs (-35C) around this time, but it's been raining rather than snowing lately). You get used to it though. It's all a balanced matter of clothing thickness and cursing at winter. Slynky, you're from Montreal right? You know what I'm talking about. :P (and I like abstractieen too.. better than ovaltine!) Once Spring comes around, I'll put up pics from the Tulip Festival to show the huge contrast.. I'll have to find a really good film to bring out all the colors, too. Good thing I bought all kinds to experiment with. :P - darkpen

Funky plant.. kinda looks like a kind of holly.. :) - curious darkpen

Not sure yet, the ice picture I'm referring to is on another roll that I finished later, so I'm picking it up next week. :) And it might not be a very difficult situation, but I only figured out about that light meter last weekend. :P I'm sure I'll encounter some more difficult ones later, but one step at a time. grin - darkpen

And, lastly, a little experiment which turned out some rather nice colors (I'm afraid the scan doesn't do it justice, though). Bulb exposure mode, shutter opened for 2-3 seconds (forget the aperture though, probably something like f/4). And that's it for the first roll (the B&W is postwork). The rest either didn't turn out right or they were bracket shots. The film was a Konica 200 color. Very cheap (heck, the pharmacy was actually giving them away with any purchase the day I picked it up). All in all, I got OK results for a first try at manual SLR. But the best part is I really like the feel of my new camera. :) - darkpen

A friend of my brother.

To infinity and beyond! (heh)

No idea what that is (had no idea what it was when I shot it either *grin*).. that was just floating in that brook. And no, it's not a rock.

A small brook (actually right next to the graffiti).

Outdoors graffiti.. mostly an outdoors color test shoot.

My cat again.. she's a good indoors subject. :)

Cool! The middle part almost looks like a Mandelbrot fractal. :) - darkpen