The temptation, when first picking up a DSLR full of buttons and menu options, is to keep it in Auto and to just rely on one button, the shutter release. But doing so is an injustice to the camera. In Auto, the camera is going to try and evenly expose the image, using whatever Aperture, Shutter and ISO setting it feels are required. Whilst this sounds like a good idea, because the aim is to get a correctly exposed image, there are very few times when the correct exposure is actually one in which the entire scene is evenly lit. Added to that, you will have no control over the depth of field, how the movement of the subject is frozen, or how much noise is in the image. Let’s use the classic example of a pale bird with a dark background. The camera won’t know the bird is the important part of the frame, it will just try and even out the exposure between the bird and the dark background. The end result will be blown highlights in the bird, which is to say, there will be d...