of turtles and tripods

here's a shot of my favorite keychain using my olympus evolt e-500 DSLR. first time i've used a tripod and a setting of 2 seconds. ISO was 100. at its original size, you will notice that the photo has hot pixels all over it. because of this, i realized that i had to do some maintenance with my almost two-year-old camera. at some point, i got frustrated and actually thought of giving my camera up and deciding to purchase a new one. good thing i found articles over the internet telling me that noise increases with slower shutter speeds. that same thread also advised me to perform pixel mapping and out-of-the-kit sensor cleaning which later on greatly reduced the hot pixels. dalawa na lang daw according to the olympus kit. i was so relieved and now excited more than ever to shoot with my cam and a tripod!

by the way, thank you Guids for teaching me and telling me how "talas" my lenses can be at f8 and also for introducing me to the wonderful world of tripods. thank you rin to my pastor Amel who will lend me his tripod for my ilocos tour next weekend. hooray!