When I bought my first DSLR about 6 years ago, I put it in Auto mode and shot JPEGs like crazy.  Not that I took bad photos, but I just didn't take full advantage of my Nikon D90.

When I bought the Canon 60D, I decided that I wanted to start taking better pictures.  Along with the composition changes I needed to make (more on that in a later post), I felt that I had to know the ins and outs of the entire camera.  Being a technical guy, I felt this was going to be the best way to leverage the features of the camera.

But there were so many features, how do you know what you could concentrate on?  After playing around with some settings, I stumbled across this lecture from Jeff Cable at B&H Videos.  It served as a great starting point and after I mastered most of those settings, I moved on to tweaking other things.

If you are a beginning photographer, I highly recommend Jeff's lecture below.