Love those Japan shots! Sun wandering through mist has always been a favourite of mine
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I didn't think anyone else went anywhere like Sapa! Went there a couple of years ago - you may be pleased to hear it's still untouched! Very uninteresting photo below, taken with the CrappyCam as we call it, but I like (was amazed!) by the colours of the Flower Mong...
As for depth of field, it's quite possible to get a fairly serious one with a digital - the total width of the image below is about 2cm - it's a heatsink, by the way
(and brand new - look at the fluff already on it!
).
I took a photo of my finger with this lens & can see where some people get paranoid about the cleanliness, or lack thereof, of their hands from...
garyi - RAW files - it's worth the effort trying to get something working with them! Biggest advantage I've found is that when using RAW, you can pay less attention to the tedious additional technical load there is with digital cameras & just deal with it later, particularly the light temperature stuff, especially if your software allows you to set the grey point (feels like cheating it's so easy...). You also have the option to completely screw the temperature up & create interesting 'effects' (handy when using dull images for design work, at least!).