They can both be fixed. Just send them to me or someone with photoshop skills. Those are some really nice photos Huntingnut. A perfect example of what I was trying to convey in this post. Sunrise can be a great time for photos. My photo of Bryce Canyon in this post is at sunrise...
Phool, there is an issue with depth of field in landscape shots. Here's what invariably happens...on P or auto mode the camera selects a large aperture and the highest shutter speed it can to compensate for the dark exposure. However, when it does this it compromises depth of field. The most common error people make when shooting landscapes is they set their camera up and focus on the background or infinity. Then the foreground appears blurry and out of focus. If one were to focus on the foreground, you have much more depth of field behind the focus point and the background will usually be in focus if you are shooting at f16 or so.
When you can't tell if something is in focus because you are shooting at night I use my lens distance measurement on the actual lens. You will see the glass window on the top of your lens with a scale in feet and usually meters to your distance and focus point depending on the positon of your lens with regard to the focus. Essentially, when you set your camera up and your subject is 10 feet in front of your lens you don't have to focus...put it on manual and set 10 feet on your lens according to the scale. It takes some confidence in your equipment but they have that on lenses for a reason...
In your kill photo, backing up and zooming in wouldn't have helped. In fact, zooming out and shooting close to you would have helped your depth of field... I would have definitely shot focus on manual as I have detailed in the paragraph previous. Of course, I would have shot raw. I would have set the camera to 2nd curtain sync flash and would have tried as many shots as possible without flash. However, I do think flash was necessary. I would have also set my aperture to f11 or so...the flash can make up for it. I would have also set my flash to flash compensation -1 or -2...as I do most of the time anyways. I hate the blinding in your face shot flash gives you. Those tips would have brought more of your surrounding in the exposure and would have kept a decent depth of field.
It's easy to armchair quarterback now, but after you shoot a great deer and you have a great sunset the last thing you want to think of is camera settings. I would be thinking it's time for a brew... I can go back and nitpick all my photos as I see the flaws in them all. Great photo once again.
Shawn
