Hello again, thank you for your expertise as I try to do the best with the equipment that I have. I went back into my files to evaluate the settings and found that I had indeed shot a few video clips with the auto setting. I reviewed both clips side to side and created a new project in iMovie in order to set the saturation, levels, contrast, etc. as close as possible for a good comparison. The conclusion is frustrating. The auto settings did not provide forensics of shutter speed or aperture which was used (which they do for my manual settings in the camera), and the sharpness with the depth of field was a bit improved. So, obviously a bit more DoF was achieved, but minimal. It was as if it was a bit more sharp in what was available, but more distance was not necessarily achieved. Next, the video was more choppy of the ocean and birds, with noticeable static/electronic jittering on the water, leading me to believe that 50 shutter speed was not used. My manual settings, obviously over exposed from lack of a filter, was set at 50 and F-stop had been pushed to F16, which was beyond what I knew I should be doing to maintain the best sharpness. In the next scenic shoot, similar setting but early evening, I still was overexposing without a filter but limited my F-stop to F10, to achieve better sharpness. I cannot say for sure that I achieved more sharpness, ...it seems pleasing, but not at all the depth of field which I hoped to attain. I know from the previous mistakes that when I attempted F22 it was not successful. Is this the result of my lens only? If so, by purchasing a zoom (which is needed for my projects) but a higher quality (wider aperture), will I succeed? My background is film photography, I'm not versed in digital tech lenses or video, so your input is wonderful, thank you!
