Despite an explosion of new features—high-definition video, in-camera editing, scene detection, and Wi-Fi—traditional digital point-and-shoots aren’t for everyone. Sure, we have our favorites, but blurry low-light photos, wan colors, and shutter lag remain the rule, not the exception. Given DSLRs’ smaller size, reasonable price, and wealth of automatic features, it’s no surprise that entry-level units increasingly have been finding a home among amateurs. We have to wonder, though: Are these advanced cameras easy enough for the average Joe to use?
Cate Czerwinski, 31, had been thinking about upgrading to a DSLR from her Fujifilm FinePix F30. We armed her with a Nikon D40 ($549)—which won our Editors’ Choice Award—and gave her 2 weeks to teach herself how to use it. She said it was a good point-and-shoot within ten minutes out of the box, but learning the camera’s finer features took time, patience, and a crash course in Photography 101. Spoiler alert: Novices who don’t like reading instruction booklets should look elsewhere.
WEEK ONE
The first thing Czerwinski learned was that she knew little about photography. Not usually one for reading instruction manuals, she spent her first few nights poring over explanations of things such as aperture and manual shutter speed. “It took a few hours just to learn the vocabulary and the basic concepts of photography,” she said. “And then to set myself up for little experiments. It made me want to go to the library.”
Czerwinski’s self-imposed curriculum began with a lesson on aperture settings, which control how much light enters the camera. When it came to motion shots, she found that taking a blur-free action photo in Auto mode was effortless. Her goal: to take an artfully blurry shot of moving traffic. “If I set it on a lower aperture setting, the cars will be blurry,” she said. “If I set it on a higher setting, they won’t be blurry. That’s the sort of thing that to my untrained eye is an experiment I can learn from and apply.”
As she shot the same subjects in different modes, Czerwinski found that the camera’s interface made recalling which settings she used for each picture easy. “It’s really easy to get the precise properties of every picture you’ve taken,” she said. “I can scroll through and see which [shot] was taken in Auto mode and which was taken in Macro.”
In the meantime, Czerwinski quickly warmed to the camera’s 6.2-megapixel resolution and 3X optical zoom. Even with such a modest zoom factor, she was able to capture birds in trees and architectural details on buildings. If bigger zoom is a priority, consider adding an optional lens like the AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED ($485), which has 7.5X optical zoom. Another option is the AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED ($300), which has 3.6X optical zoom and Nikon’s Vibration Reduction technology for steadier shots.
As for the D40’s size, which is smaller than average and meant to ease novices into the DSLR category, Czerwinski preferred carrying the camera with the strap yet still found it easy to hold with one hand. “But I haven’t gotten adept at manipulating the lens on the go,” she said. “If something happens quickly, I couldn’t manage to get the perfect shot.” That’s cautionary advice for soccer moms and young parents, two of the biggest demographics manufacturers are targeting with their entry-level DSLRs.
WEEK TWO
After spending a few days glued to the manual—and making it about a third of the way through—Czerwinski began to trust herself and experimented on her own. When she still found herself confused, she picked the brains of some friends, one of whom is in the film industry. After a few conversations, she felt she better understood the vocabulary and finally had the guts to adjust the focus manually. “It’s half the reason you get one of these things,” she said.
After shooting moving subjects, Czerwinski’s next goal was to get a grip on low-light photography. Often frustrated by her point-and-shoot’s overly bright party shots, she was eager to take pictures in which dim, romantic rooms actually looked that way. “That’s when I got really excited to figure out the manual settings,” she said. “Even if the pictures were dark, that’s what the light was like."
Ultimately, Czerwinski didn’t take as many portraits and landscapes during her 2 weeks with the camera but generally found that falling back on Auto mode worked best for her in those cases. Even more than action and low-light shots, portraits and landscapes taught her that a refined feature set cannot make up for a lack of artistic talent. Still on Czerwinski’s DSLR to-do list, for example, is mastering composition. “[I’d like to] focus on different areas of depth in larger-scale shots,” she said. 
“All of my stuff is pretty remedial at this point. Playing with more complicated shots, as opposed to, ‘Hey, that looks cool. Let me take a picture of that.’”
THE VERDICT
Although Czerwinski immediately noticed a pleasant difference from her less advanced digicam and found her photography skills improving after just a week, she said she doesn’t have the time to invest in learning how to master a DSLR. “If you come across one of these and are flush with a little extra cash, it’s still a great point-and-shoot,” she said. “I won’t dissuade anyone from using it. But they’re not gonna pop it out of the box and be Ansel Adams.”
