Chapter 2 Lens

I have two lenses, one with a focal length of 18-55mm and one with a focal length of 55-200mm. I was very interested to learn that a fixed focal length lens can produce better pictures than a lens with a zoom.  I tried to take a photo with my longer lens at 200mm.  The pictures were blurry and the camera was hard to keep still.  I think that the only pictures I could take with a 200mm focal length are landscapes or portraits.  I don't have a tripod right now but I would like to try taking pictures at 200mm by putting the camera on a flat surface. 
I also found it very interesting to think that not only can you zoom in with the camera to take a picture of something your eye cant see but you can zoom out.  Since 55mm is about where the human eye can see I can take a picture of more than I can see at 18mm. 

18mm focal length

55mm focal length

Fisheye lenses sound interesting.  I would love to get one, or an attachment for the lenses that I have.  The book describes the fisheye lens as exaggerating the difference between the objects up close and the objects that are far away.  The picture of the bull in the book is very dramatic.  It seems more dramatic than a photograph of the same scene with a normal lens could be. 
I have noticed that the automatic focus on the camera does not focus on the correct area of most photographs.  I keep my camera on manual focus most of the time. On automatic focus I have also noticed that it takes longer.  The camera wants extra time to focus the picture when I could have done it myself and have already taken the photo.  I noticed this about 2 years ago so I have been manual focusing since.  The drawback is that sometimes you focus the camera just slightly off and nothing is really in focus.