My wife and I decided to have diner at our local Ruby Tuesdays. We love the food, love the atmosphere, and we had a coupon. So after a hectic day of shopping, we headed to the restaurant. One of the great things about Ruby Tuesdays is that the chefs there pay as much attention to presentation of their food as the taste. Considering it is not a high end restaurant, this is pretty impressive in itself. The other thing I like is that they have those cool looking square plates. All the makings for an impromptu photo shoot.

Most digital cameras on the market today come with software managers of some sort. They allow you do do a variety of photo manipulations depending on what gets packaged with the camera and who the manufacturer is. In general, most software that comes with our camera will allow for the basic; transferring images from your camera, basic photo editing, and perhaps some form of sharing or printing software. The majority of beginners I have talked to find that working with their camera's transfer software can be very confusing. Especially if that person's abilities with a computer is uncertain. While the software that comes bundled does have good intentions, I notice that most of them shove images in sub, sub, sub folders that make it harder to find later when you are trying to upload an image to, say, a social web site or through your email. Suddenly it becomes a needle in a haystack.

So you have decided to take my advise and switch the camera from auto to manual mode, now what? Here is where it can start to seem a daunting task to beginners.  What do you set the camera to in order to get a well lit, useable image? Unfortunately the answer is not just a 'set it to such-and-such' and fire away. One needs to understand how a camera creates an image in the first place. While I will give you a short introduction in this post I highly recommend reading more about exposure for a fuller understanding of picture taking.

Years ago I owned a Canon AE-1 Program film SLR. I loved it and it traveled with me everywhere I went. The only problem was that I relied too heavily on the program mode and never really learned to shoot in manual mode. Unfortunately when I was younger funds were scarce and experimentation took a back seat to common sense. The percentage rate of success was greater shooting in program mode. Now that the digital age is here and we have the luxury of shooting (and previewing) multiple exposures without a loss of funds, there is no reason preventing anyone from learning to shoot in manual mode. So when I purchase my first dSLR I made it a point to get off the program carousel and learn to shoot like the pros -- in manual.