You buy your first DSLR, and think yay! I'm going to be the next Ansel Adams or Annie Leibowitz! But here's a little secret for you: they're not using that little green square button setting on your camera, nor the pretty picture settings. Yes, technology has made today's cameras very clever, and the higher the pixels, the better your pictures, right? Film was (still is for those purists), a wonderful way to learn photography. There wasn't enough allowance for sloppy learning. Every picture.. Every error... Came at a cost.. A real, hard cost. The result was that you could tell, very quickly, the great photographers from the average. Great photographers got to KNOW their cameras. What each setting did, and what that would translate into in the final picture. Great photographers had an end result in mind. They weren't simply snapping away.
Your camera, whether an entry level or heavy duty DSLR, has both automatic and manual settings. I like to think of it like this (for those pros out there, this description may horrify you. So stop here): what average gives, average gets. Your automatic settings take an overall reading of light coming into the camera, and make decisions on speed and apertures based on the overall ("average") light.
An example of the problem with this is that sometimes the focal point of your picture, is not basked in light (as your very clever eye can see), but the sky behind the face is. The result? A beautiful blue sky, and a dark (underexposed) skin. What your manual settings will allow you to do, is TELL the camera that you want it to note the light on the face rather than the light surrounding the face. In other words, you are exposing for the face and not the sky. What you will get then is a well exposed face. There are downsides to this example, in that you may blow out the sky, but to illustrate the point, what the manual settings allow you to do is take control of what the camera is "seeing".
Another example of important utilization of manual settings, is focal point (or depth of field). An example is illustrated in the picture below. See how the bottom one pops a little bit more? It's a subtle difference- but sometimes that's all you need. This example works particularly well for portrait photography- to blow out the background more. You will see in the top picture, which was the camera's automatic setting, it didn't automatically select the largest aperture. But that's what I wanted, so I told the camera what aperture I required in the below picture.
When your automatic settings come into play, they will always decide on the best possible scenario given the amount of light coming into the camera. But the manual settings will put the control in your hands. The manual settings are where the magic begins!
I will go into some detail on what some of the settings mean, and how you can use them, as well as some examples. But for now, get out your cameras manual (that's the little white book that came in the box when you bought your camera), and get reading. And then practice practice practice! There is not better way to learn.
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