Its a camera.
Cameras are very simple, you have a sensor, and a lens, an aperture, and a shutter.
The camera will control the exposure and the focus, all you have to control is what you point it at.
Leave it on JPG setting, Leave it on fully auto exposure setting, leave it on autofocus setting.
Now consider, if you can read my words you are connected to the single most comprehensive library known to man, it holds thousands of documents that instruct you to use a camera. Its called the internet. Browse for articles that explain about composition and how to use a camera.
After you can produce good looking photographs on all automatic, you can begin to take control. Set the camera for aperture priority auto exposure. Then follow instructions on the internet on using aperture priority mode. When you can produce satisfying images in this mode, set the camera to shutter priority auto exposure and browse for instructions on using that mode. You should now have an understanding of what those two modes offer and why you would chose one or other of them.
When you can produce satisfying images in both aperture priority and shutter priority modes, select fully manual where you finally take full control of exposure.
The guiding principle here is to work from allowing the camera full control of everything and you simply compose the image until you can compose and take pleasing images. And you end up in stages at being totally in charge.
Because you do it carefully and gradually, you learn all about taking pictures on the journey, in easy to digest steps.
It wont take long there will be mistakes and surprising results. But you will love the journey.
Don't forget that a digital camera lets you take hundreds of experimental images every day at no cost other than your time. So just play, point it at the cat the sofa the car the garden anything and play and play and have a good laugh at the results, deleting the poor shots and keep the interesting ones.
I do the exact same thing when I pick up a new camera, I play and play until I am familiar with all the modes and take good images.
Don't forget read the manual and try out the things it suggests, its your bible for the camera read it from end to end, then read it again from end to end, then read it again from end to end. After the third time you read it from end to end, you will begin to understand the things in it that just didn't make any sense the first few times you read them.
And finally, after all this, you will be ready to buy a good book, and you will by then be a competent photographer that will get real benefit from the book you choose, and you will know enough to be able to choose the right book for you.
Last edited by Imageman; 07-29-2014 at 03:59 PM.