Some of you get such superb close-up shots of your pets!

Now I have (still boxed) a hybrid camera which allows manual control, please could some of you tell me the best exposures and apertures to get a good picture? I presume the exposure needs to be quite short. Mind you, I think another prerquisite which might be harder to fulfil is 'co-operative ratties!'

I suspect that much of the weekend will be taken up with reading manuals on the camera and on an MP4 player. I don't even know how to copy tracks from a CD on to my computer - I gather in is done in Windows Media Player?

All this with great thanks to my late cousin who made a little expenditure possible! I didn't go for a DSLR because of weight, size when packing and slightly shaky hands which could make changing lenses difficult.

All advice welcome!

Yay! What did you get? Maybe we can help you better if we know...someone might have the same one. A good idea for moving targets is always a fast shutter speed if light allows.

Ann,

You have a lot of control over your environment. After all, the little darlings are confined to a cage!

I would start off with good lighting; that may be as simple as placing the cage next to a bright window and then filling in the other side with either lights or a large white piece of posterboard which will reflect the sunlight back onto your subject. Hopefully, your lighting will be such that you can use a shutter speed of 1/125thor more, as well as stopping down enough to have some depth of field latitude. I would guess f/8 or higher.

You don't want to stand/sit there forever waiting for something to happen. I would put the camera on a tripod, make all the settings, focus on where the rats are "likely to be" and then just click away. You should get one or two good ones for every twenty or so clicks

Rusty

It's an Olympus SP-570UZ. I wanted a high-specification hybrid as I felt I couldn't cope with the weight and bulk of a DSLR or the problem of changing lenses.