Hey, cheers for an incredibly swift reaction to my cry for help!
You've already put your finger on more than one aspect of good static pics.
I suspect that a SMALL enough aperture may be the reason for some very poor digital camera performance in the still life field. Manufacturers tend to dazzle us by emphasising how wonderfully fast their cameras are and completely forget the other end of the scale. My Lumix FZ20 can maintain f2.8 throughout its 12x zoom range, but the useless thing can't close down to less than f8! So, no great depth of field is possible nor nice long exposures.
Hmm, I think I may be stuck with that, grump, grump.

You've already put your finger on more than one aspect of good static pics.
I suspect that a SMALL enough aperture may be the reason for some very poor digital camera performance in the still life field. Manufacturers tend to dazzle us by emphasising how wonderfully fast their cameras are and completely forget the other end of the scale. My Lumix FZ20 can maintain f2.8 throughout its 12x zoom range, but the useless thing can't close down to less than f8! So, no great depth of field is possible nor nice long exposures.
Hmm, I think I may be stuck with that, grump, grump.
