RTFM

They're cunning devils, the Canon people. Despite having had the D30 for several months now, I had failed miserably to get round to reading the effing manual properly and have basically been treating it like my lovely, but extremely basic, Centon semi-automatic. This meant that not only was I frequently fighting with the D30 when it did seemingly bizarre things like taking a succession of shots any time I tried to do a longish exposure at night, but I wasn't using exciting features like white-balance adjustments and Depth of Field Preview! The excitement of it! I've always wanted DoF preview...strange, I know.

Anyway, hopefully with a bit more practise (and more reading of the manual) my pictures will improve. I recently submitted some pictures to Shutterstock, and so far have made 80 cents! The likelihood of this funding an escape from the proof seems remote, but it's quite entertaining, and doubtless good practise (is that the right spelling of practise? or should it be 'ice'? I can never remember).

Apparently the sort of photos that sell best are ones with people in them, so I foresee a batch of Michael pics, as he's currently the only one who's agreed to sign the model release form. Other voluteers should form an orderly queue...;-)