In all my blathering about getting a “fancy” new camera, two years and 12,000 shots later I finally decided to read the manual for the pretty decent camera I do have. And I actually learned a thing or two.

For one, it turns out I can customize the self-timer delay and number of shots to create something approaching stop-motion animation—or at least allow for multiple attempts at those family group shots during the holidays—without all that running back and forth.

But the neatest feature hidden deep within the camera is the ability to set the shutter speed to a value between 1 and 15 seconds. Wish I’d known about this looking up at that night sky in Bryce. Here’s a 6 second test shot I took out my window this evening.

I also discovered that there’s a hidden stitch assist mode, neat for helping line up multiple shots, but still requiring panoramic software to do the rest of the blending.