After all the years of using a Canon camera I have always used the point and shoot modes. Today I used the screen above on the camera for the first time. I was following the tips in, Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. He gets straight to it and gets you into manual mode. He tells you to select a shady area of the garden (I used a darkish room), pick a subject to shoot. Set your camera to manual mode and stand about 6-8 feet away. Set you aperture to f/5.6 and then set the shutter speed until you get the correct exposure.

This is the bit that threw me. I never knew what that was, and how the camera was going to tell me when I was correct. In fact, it is the top arrow in the middle of the picture above. As you adjust the shutter speed the lower arrow moves back or forth. Once you have the two arrows matched up, that is the correct exposure. How simple is that?

Bryan says, manual mode is simple. I thought that was just a seasoned pro speaking with years of experience, but from this first basic step maybe it is true. I will soon find out as I work through the rest of the book.