Here's my little piece! If you have a good quality camera (most brand new to 1 year old ones are) then all the auto programmes will be great and perfect for everyday. That's what they were designed for. I have a Cannon 30D for example which is I believe over the borderline for a professional camera but I can let the camera do all the hard work most of the time. There is nothing more annoying than taking heaps of photos of one event/action/moment in manual mode and then finding they are all blurred!!! But, equally you can take a far better image in manual mode as you can set your own settings. But you can do so much in Photoshop / Lightroom nowadays that it probably makes very little difference to be honest! Well not true really but you know what I mean! The better the photo the less editing time it takes!
BUT......all this said, it is a great hobbie. You can have some great fun. I did an evening course just for DSLR and then an advanced course and now I do professional photography. one of the main advantages of doing it via a course rather than a book is obviously the practical advice. We were sent outside to take photos of lines or the moon or the light on the building (it was evening so almost dark!) but weren't allowed to use flash and in the advanced course it covered tripod use, lenses and open exposure, bracketing, etc. Half of which no one ever uses I am sure! But we were also given homework each night and that was the fun part! The topics were weather (like leaves blowing (movement) and sunsets (ISO), water (sparkles (light/dark), etc. Others were textures, life, a child or pet, the beach (so very high light as we have white white sand here!) and buildings. Oh and another was wildlife - insects (so macro). I took photos of stuff I would never dream of! And they look so so good! he also got us to look at the composition - like grandpa holding grandchild's hand - to focus on the hands but to also focus on the size difference and age so you had to think of how you could make that stand out, etc. They gave heaps of tips too - like coming down to a child's level. Lie on the ground to take a photo. If there is a line to have that on the photo to draw the eye to the object (person, etc)........anyway, I am going on and on! But if you ahve the time and the willingness to try then I would do it - but never give up the auto mode on a good camera. You might want to learn with a friend too as you can go on mini shoots together - like to the local woodland and take photos of trees, etc.....sorry going on again! Oh it's almost midnight must go to sleep! Got start of soccer season tomorrow (that's where sport mode comes into play and a HUGE lens!) You can have some great fun with lenses like fisheye!
GoodnighT and good luck!
Suzie
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