Thanks for joining us today, and we hope your film is loaded properly.

Before we go too far, we’ll assume that you already know how to turn your camera on, and that the camera should always be OFF when changing memory cards or lenses.
It’s also important to make sure you point the camera lens-down when changing lenses, as any dust and dirt that enter the camera body will show up as spots on your pictures, possibly requiring a trip to the repair-shop to get the imaging-chip filter cleaned.

Turn the camera off, blow it off if it’s dusty (away from where you’ll be changing lenses), point it down, and change lenses as quickly to leave the camera-body lens opening uncovered for as little time as possible.
We’ll also assume that you know how to use the AUTO mode, so we’ll not spend much time on that.

In this first installment we’ll be covering the 4-primary exposure modes, these being Auto or “Auto”, P or “Program”, S or “Shutter-priority”, and A or “Aperture-Priority.

The M or “Manual” setting is pretty much self-explanatory, you can set the camera to any setting you want and it’ll take the picture (good or bad). Once you’ve learned your camera and settings, the Manual setting will give you the most flexibility (both good and bad).

(Auto)-Now we’ve said that you can simply set your mode-dial to “Auto” and forget the whole thing. Auto will do all of the thinking for you and set-up your camera to take the best picture it thinks you want to take. There’s the rub. If what you’re thinking (and seeing) are different from the camera, you won’t get the picture you want.
Nikon has done a fantastic job of having a look-up-table of representative pictures and the camera will analyze and compare your picture to the table and match the settings to the best matches. Pretty amazing stuff.
You are able to adjust the ISO (auto if you want) and the Flash mode (auto if you want), so again, the camera does everything, but many of the adjustments are locked out, limiting your creative flexibility.

(P)- Program mode- This is the first of the “Creative-Modes”, allowing you some flexibility in how you set your camera. Once your camera is in the P-mode, you can rotate the Main Command Dial (the one on the back of the Nikon camera) to indicate a “P*” in the LCD screen. This allows you to turn the Main Command Dial and set different Aperture (circled in green below) and Shutter speed (circled in red below) combinations from a pre-programmed table in the camera.

They all give you the same exposure, but allow you to vary the shutter speed or aperture to get the results you want.
It also allows you to change your White-balance settings, exposure compensation, bracketing, manual pop-up for the built-in Speedlight, flash exposure compensation, and a few other features that aren’t available in Auto mode.

(S)-Shutter Priority- This setting allows you to determine the shutter speed you want to use to get the photo you want. You can vary the shutter speed by using the Main Command Dial and the aperture will change accordingly to give you a good exposure.
If you go to a setting that the camera can’t give a good exposure for, it will indicate “Hi” (over-exposed) or “Lo” (low or Under-exposed) on the LCD screen.

This means that you’ve exceeded the limits of the aperture settings and will either need to change your shutter-speed (to get back into the aperture range) or change your ISO setting.
Why would you use the “S” setting? Well the reason most often given for wanting shutter-control of your camera is to either “freeze” fast-action by using a high (fast) shutter speed (like 1/1000th for example), or to blur the action, or let in more light by using a slow shutter speed (like 1/8th for example). The slower the shutter speed, the more the need to use a tripod, and the faster the shutter speed, the more likely you are to get a sharp picture.
This is where your creativity comes in and you have to do some photo-thinking. What are you trying to achieve with your photo? If you’re photographing a fast moving racecar, for example, with a fast shutter-speed, you can freeze the action and get a sharp (or at least sharper) picture, but at the expense of losing some of the sensation of speed, which a slower shutter-speed would give you.
If you want to blur the wind driven movement of a tree, you can set a slow shutter speed, place your camera on a tripod, and capture the blurring of the tree swaying in the breeze.

Compare the 2 photos below…which one imparts “speed”, and which one is sharper? The question you have to ask yourself when setting up your shutter speed is “what are the results I want in my picture?”

(A)-Aperture Priority- This setting allows you to control the aperture of your lens, while the camera determines the correct shutter-speed.
You vary the aperture on the Nikon cameras by using the Sub-Command Dial which is on the Front of the camera. This feature has the exposure warning on the LCD screen of the camera, warning you with “Hi” and “Lo” when the aperture you’ve selected exceeds the exposure range of the shutter-speed and/or ISO setting.
You want to use this setting if you want to control the depth-of-field of your picture.
This is the “in focus” part of your picture, and unless you’re either using the depth-of-field preview button (not available on the D50) on the front of the camera, or reviewing your shots on the screen (not the best way, but it helps), you won’t really see the difference through the viewfinder.
The depth-of-field is controlled by many factors, some of which are the focal length of your lens (50mm, 105mm, 200mmm etc), the lens-to-subject distance, subject to background distance, and the aperture setting of your lens.
The aperture is the “hole” in your lens that lets light through, and the smaller the aperture the longer the depth-of-field (longer “in-focus” area of your picture, front-to-back).
The aperture is measured in F-stops, and an f-stop of f2.8 is a BIGGER aperture than an aperture of f22.
The bigger the number (22) the smaller the aperture (confusing, no?), and the smaller the aperture, the less light you let in, but the more depth-of-field you have.
A good time to use a large aperture (2.8, 3.3, 4.5 etc) for creative effect is when you have a subject (human, plant, car etc) that you want in focus, and a background (and/or foreground) that you want out of focus. If you set your aperture (using the Sub-Command Dial) to 2.8, or 4.5 or there-abouts, you’ll get the subject in focus, and blur the background.

The following pictures are what would happen with the 2 different apertures, the shot on the left having a large aperture (ex.: 2.8) and the shot on the right having a much smaller aperture (ex.: f14). The differences show up better when the pictures are double-clicked and enlarged in Flickr.

The best way to preview this is to use the depth-of-field preview button on the front of the camera, this way you can adjust the aperture to blur the background, but still have all, or most, of your subject in focus.
A small aperture is good when you want as much of the picture (front-to-back) as possible in focus.
If you’re taking a landscape, and have a great foreground, nice middle-ground subject, and a beautiful background, a small aperture (f16, f22 etc) will help to get as much of this in focus as possible.

The A (Aperture Priority) and the S (Shutter Priority) are probably the most used modes, especially by knowledgeable photographers because they provide the most creative freedom, while maintaining a lot of the automatic features that make a DSLR so much fun to use!