Photographers who have used 35mm film SLRs will mostly feel right at home with a digital SLR. The basic ergonomics, body design and control placement of most digital SLRs is quite similar to their film-based siblings. The buttons and dials used for attaching a lens, changing shutter speeds and apertures, checking depth of field and setting focus and exposure metering on D-SLRs remain basically unchanged from familiar 35mm camera body designs.

The two primary shooting formats for digital cameras are JPEG and RAW. JPEG is a file compression format that offers superb image quality when used correctly, while RAW is an excellent format for photographers who either need it or like working with it, but it isn’t for everyone.

Sophisticated technology goes into the design and manufacture of your digital camera. Understanding some of that technology can help you to predict how the camera will fare when you’re shooting in a variety of situations. For our annual How-To issue, we’re including this article on the anatomy of an image sensor.

Modern digital cameras do an impressive job in getting an acceptable exposure for most images. There’s a difference between an acceptable exposure and an exceptional exposure, however. The best exposures make maximum use of the capabilities of the camera sensor and internal camera processing while causing only a few problems when printing or working on images in the computer.