Welcome and Welcome Back

This post is aimed at everyone who just got there first Digital SLR. You may have shot film before but things are very different in the digital realm. I am going to go down a quick list of things you should know about your new camera and photography in general.

• Shoot in RAW, This will need to be a post of it's own, but just do it. You should Rendering: Rendering the Print: the art of photography read by Karl Lang. It explains this better than I can. In short you will kick yourself later for shooting jpgs.
• Get Adobe Lightroom, with out this you are going to waste a lot of time in the software that ships with your camera. It's better, it's not a replacement for photoshop, it's something else. Lightroom is your darkroom, Photoshop is an airbrush and scissors. You use photoshop after you develop your image.
  
• Stop using the Auto mode. In full auto you have a very fancy and fast point and shoot, move that dial elsewhere. Same goes for auto white balance, don't bother with it and shooting RAW it really doesn't matter anyway.
  
• Shoot, Shoot, and Shoot some more. Storage is cheap and with a Digital SLR feedback is instant.
• Never leave your camera at home, Seriously, don't. If you do you will miss things you want to shoot.
• Always have the batteries charged and the memory card empty and ready to go. This relates to the one above.
• You need to use Autofocus. If you come from a film SLR background you need to know a few things about modern Digital SLRs. The viewfinders suck. You have to buy a $8000 Digital SLR to get the same viewfinder as a $300 film body. Trying to do manual focus through a crop frame viewfinder is hard, and you will miss a lot. These cameras are built around autofocus and do not have a split prism viewfinder. So get used to using it. There are times when manual focus is the way to go, but if you are just getting started with Digital SLR, now is not the time. If your camera has a Live View mode you can manual focus that way for decent results.
• Start Reading. Start with your camera's manual or at least a dummies guide to it. Then head over to my Recommended Books section, and get some books to read. If you are new to terms like fstop, Tv, Av, and M then get Understanding Exposure to start with.
  
• Shoot, Shoot, and Shoot some more. Yes this again, take more pictures. Now show them to someone who is not emotionally connected to you have have them tell you what's good and whats not. Flickr is good for this, so are photography groups and company photography mailing lists.
• Work with ambient light to get started with, shoot outside where there is more of it. Once you know how everything on the camera works without thinking about it you can start looking into lighting. When you are ready, hit up Strobist.
• Talk to people who have been doing this a while before you buy anything else. Lenses, Flashes, Gels, Tripods, etc... Use there knowledge to your advantage.
• Go out shooting with someone who's work you like or even a group of photographers you know. Watching other people shoot the same subject can really open you eyes to other viewpoints.
• Save Your money and buy good glass, Glass can last you a lifetime, but bodies keep getting better and cheaper.
• Borrow gear as you can from friends to try things out. If you have no friends into photography or they all have different systems hit up Samys Rental Dept. or RentGlass.com
• Have Fun, don't get caught up in the technical side so much that you forget to have fun out there.