Manual mode gives you complete control over your camera settings letting you independently adjust the three key exposure variables: ISO, aperture and shutter speed Together, they determine the overall exposure of your photos. They also affect your photos in other key ways – by adjusting the sharpness, depth of field, and overall image quality. You can also ensure perfect sharpness, create different depth of field effects, and keep your low-light photos looking high quality. This week, we shoot in manual mode.

Photos for P52-10-24 are to be taken and posted between Feb 18 and Feb 24.

Rules:
1. Anyone and everyone who is interested is eligible. The goal continues to be
have fun and share comments, concepts, insights, and techniques with fellow
Pentaxians.
2. Each week will feature a Theme and Sub-concept for you to explore.
3. Post your single picture in Project 52-10 thread for the week. Explain what
motivated you to take the picture or how it represents the weekly theme.
4. Some post-processing is OK (adjusting white balance, exposure, color
saturation), but let's try to stay away from heavily PP'ed images here. Try to
keep the creativity to photographic techniques and the captures themselves.
5. Since this project is about technique, and not camera, shots taken by non
Pentax cameras are allowed. Cameras may be SLRs, DSLRs, Point & Shoot,
Medium Format, etc. But no phones, please.
6. There is one “Theme Concept” labeled “black and white,” but feel free to post
black and white, sepia, monotone, etc., for any of the other themes.
7. The picture you post should be taken during the week in which the theme is
active to be eligible for judging.
8. Any picture taken from thread start date to listed closing date is acceptable.

[MossyRocks]

Like others here, I am awed with MossyRocks image of what I assume is a watch.

Yes. it is an old very broken Elgen wrist watch. I could get the movement repaired, the main spring is damaged and something else is also stuck, but the case doesn't' stay closed and the watch crystal is horribly scratched. As such it is a great candidate for photography since tinkering and having it open isn't going to destroy it any more.

137 images? WOW!

Yes it is a focus stack and at f/5.6 and at the minimum focusing distance of the D FA 100/2.8 WR Macro is less than 1/64th of an inch deep. So my method was to manually focus each shot moving the focus ring about 1/2 or less notch/rib each time. When doing focus stacking you want to have a fair amount of overlap of the in focus area between each shot so that the stacker can get a good alignment between images so you move the focus a very minimal amount for each shot. Very fine difference in focus also prevent banding in the final image from not having an area in focus or not quite in focus.

And that will be our winner for this weeks challenge!

Well done MossyRocks, congratulations.

I guess I will need to pay attention to next week's (now this week's) challenge. Thanks.