A dragonfly from a recent post is somewhere down the pages..that is why this post is done now. I call this Macro level 2.0, assuming some of you are like melol, having taken a bunch of macro shots and screwed up a large part of them! I hope some of the macro graduate students and experts will chime in to this thread. A few Macro 2.0 thoughts. Please correct if incorrect! Depth of Field is very tricky and even high aperture(higher number) only change the range slightly, no dramatic increase of depth of field here. I say this with a point of view of focusing about 6 inches from the object. Very shallow depth of field. High Aperture means slower shutter speed(unless you opt to higher ISO) and with some of these subjects, speed is needed as is a steady hand if tripod is not appropriate. Light is vital! This affects both aperture and shutter speed if using aperture mode in digital and not total manual. I suggest using the in camera allowance for upping of lowering the 1/3 or stop increments to find a way to beat highlights and allow enough light without altering shutter speed. Macro mode in some digitals means center, closest subject focus. This mode may also increase color saturation. This is to play with. I dont use the macro mode and take the 50mm lens and try to get right on generally with aperture priority. You dont need the entire object in focus! This is said because the human focus on the image may not require it. A recent example is the Enmos front view of a dragonfly face. The head and even the cells of the eyes are wonderfully clear. This was the intent of the image. The wings? Only a bit further back the wings are blurred, hopelessly beyond even the circle of confusion. But in this wonderful image, the face IS the image and totally appropriate. Check your eyes! Manual focus is a good way to go in my level 2.0 thoughts(no acceptance to graduate school yet!). I wear glasses and these are trifocals. I found my self using different parts of the glasses when doing manual focus..big mistake. So, now I am trained to look for the focus light in the viewfinder and have adjusted my hold to focus only through the accurate part of my eyeglasses. This could be a prob with manual focus that will go unnoticed except for fuzzy images..and what happened to that one! Any ideas will be appreciated.