My suggestion: take it step by step,...
*Start to read the manual, get comfortable with the buttons that are on your camera... try to find the basic settings/controls (aperture, iso, shutter speed)
*Try to understand (theoretically) what these things do to a picture, this link might help:
http://www.dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=45*Go out in the garden (don’t mess with flash inside, it will mess up the effect) sit down or position the camera in front of a random object/subject preferably one with a lot of detail/depth/structure/color and start with taking one picture in automatic (green square) mode and see what settings the camera used to make this picture. Switch to manual (M) mode and enter the settings from your first picture... Now go on and make series of pictures, with every picture you adjust one setting a little and see what it does, take at least 5 (even 10+ when possible) steps up and same thing for steps down from your original setting...
Start with aperture 10 steps up, 10 steps down and return to original settings, repeat the same for shutter speed and iso.
And see what effect these changes have on your picture... evaluate immediately on the camera screen and re-evaluate the whole bunch of pictures on the computer afterwards.
Don't forget to read the camera settings with every picture when evaluating (you can find these in the exif information, included in the caption)
*If you feel more or less comfortable with these settings and have an idea of what they do try to get a notion or understanding of “depth of field” (D.O.F.):
http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-...h-of-field.htmlGet back to your garden and experiment yourself,... with changing two settings at once: aperture and shutter speed... Get your original settings and move to a bigger aperture number (eg 4->5.6) and also adjust shutter speed to a slower one (eg 125->100) (NOTE: canon only indicates 125 but means 1/125th of a second, so 100 means 1/100th of a second= slower, canon adds “if you’re working with full seconds).
Normally moving the aperture number up one step and the shutter speed number (125->100) down one step, you should get a picture with similar brightness/contrast as the original one.
Make a first series with your lens at 24mm, make a second series with your lens set at 105mm,...
What you will see changing is your depth of field, or the area/circle which is in focus.
Evaluate your series again with keeping a close eye on the settings you entered for that particular picture.
*Once you get these things more or less going you can go out and about to a local park, lake, mountain and get yourself to shoot pictures... look for possible subjects (trees, rocks, road signs, cows,...) and predetermine what area of your picture you want sharp and how much you like to be in/out of focus... Try the camera settings until you have the D.O.F. as you wanted it... try to reason/predict with every adjustment you make and see what comes out of it... Repeat at will with a 1000 different subjects J
*And after all that,... A nice composition makes a picture that much more interesting,... Here’s some basic tips:
http://www.dptutorial.com/photography-tips-for-beginners*Now it’s up to you to create your own style and let your imagination and creativity fire at will...
*And start to learn how to work with Adobe’s lightroom , cameraRAW, photoshop software or Mac’s aperture software or... One hint stay away from canons DPP software and go straight for lightroom or other equivalent.
Good luck!
Steven
