Another question about the carousel

Hi

I know I need to learn a couple of things about customizing the theme …
but regarding the carousel, I see it shows the latest articles by default.

I tried to images to corresponding articles & so I picked one article & added a default image. It appears with the article on the front page, in the carousel, but then realized when I looked closer that all content in the carousel was appearing with the correct title & linking BUT all with the introductory text of the newest blog item & not each article title + its own teaser!

How can this be changed? Is this intended? If so, is there any way to disable the “wrong” teaser text?

And … for items without a default image, you have a biggish empty space to the right. Is there any way to avoid this, e.g. by having a an image automatically getting inserted in that space, for those that have none?

Regards