Sakura & new camera

It has been a while since my last post. I have been quite busy with school and started with an internship. Meanwhile I got myself a new camera. On the trip to japan the old ixus 55 was a bit too limited. Been doubting between a DSLR and a high end compact but in the end I chose for the portability. After some deliberation I chose for the Panasonic Lumix LX3. The reviews on dpreview and dannychoo looked good. It does not have much zoom but after checking the zoom in the japan trip pics the extra zoom was not that necessary.

Been playing with it for a while and in the street there happened to be some sakura trees in bloom. Not enough trees to look like its raining sakura petals so I got a blossom to check the macro qualities of the camera.
I had to get used to the shallow DOF when taking pictures. Often petals in the back were a bit blurred. Love the details you see on the picture like the structure of a petal.
Also lighting was not easy with the lens being so close. In this pic I tried a shutter time of 60 seconds combined with f/8.0 Worked out quite nice.

I must say I like the manual setting of the camera. The whitebalance/focus is still tricky though. Still need more practice with the camera. When I get the hang of the lighting/whitebalance aspect, expect some figure pics.