Many new camera users are intimidated by the huge amount of features and functions on even medium price digital cameras and often opt for the simple point and shoot models instead. Keep in mind that while a simple completely automatic camera is fine for indoor photography, you will find that in most cases, outdoor use will produce less than perfect results, landscape photography will be disappointing and special effects almost impossible. A top of the line digital SLR will be very expensive and will have features the average amateur photographer will never use, but with medium range digital SLRs being so reasonably priced, there is no reason why a beginner should not use one of these for his introduction to digital photography.

The best part about digital cameras is that mistakes cost you nothing you just delete the photo so learning the functions is not something to be frightened of. With the number of photos you take not burning a hole in your pocket, you can take as many pictures as you want and while keeping the good ones, learn from the bad ones before deleting them. Digital photography is risk free and with some experimentation and a little time spent on reading a few articles on the subject, you will find your confidence and skills improving. And once you understand the basic settings, you will want to go on to the more advanced features to improve the quality of the photos you take.

Of course there will be times when you cannot afford to experiment and that is when the auto setting is a God send now all you need to do is press the button and you will get a good photo. And with a good digital SLR the auto function will give you better results than the simple point and shoot cameras because you will have a better lens, sensors and other features working for you.

Understanding what you can do with picture editing software is an essential part of any introduction to digital photography. Every digital camera will come with the software to download photos to a computer and most will have editing and photo manipulation features to enable you to improve on the images you have captured. You can modify, edit and enhance a photo as you want and add a lot of special effects to change an ordinary photo into a great one. In the end you will have no bad photos just photos on which you need to use the editing software more creatively.

When you find that digital photography is much more than simply capturing an image for posterity, you will be happy that you bought a camera that gives you the scope to be creative.