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All photographers: Awesome photography tips please?

I just bought a Nikon P80 digital camera, not SLR but not your typical point-and-shoot camera, sort of an in-between.

First, allocate time to really READ & STUDY the Owner's Manual for your camera. This is the only way you can learn to actually use the camera and all its features. Simply messing around with different settings without knowing what they do leads to frustration.

Your camera has several shooting modes: Program (P), Aperture Priority (A), Shutter Priority (S), Manual (M). In P the camera will set the aperture and shutter speed. In A you choose an aperture and the camera will set a shutter speed to give correct exposure. In S you choose a shutter speed and the camera will set an aperture to give correct exposure. In M you set both shutter speed and aperture. The P mode offers you no real creative control other than composition. A & S both give you more creative control and M gives you complete creative control.

Ansel Adams said "Pictures are not taken, they are made." If you leave your camera in P and just point the camera at a scene and release the shutter then you're just taking pictures. If you are using A or S or M and looking at your scene from different vantage points and deciding what should be included - or excluded - and whether the background should be in focus or blurred then you're beginning to make a picture.

In my opinion, too many people seem to think that if you just take hundreds and hundreds of pictures you'll somehow learn to take a good picture. I completely disagree. That is what I call the "machine gunner" mentality - take 300 shots and hope a few are worth saving. I encourage the "sniper mentality" - one exposure, one good picture. After all, if you take 300 bad pictures and don't know why they're bad, what have you learned? Other than how to take 300 bad pictures. The goal is to make a good picture and just shooting willy-nilly will not accomplish that. So slow down, take yor time, and think about what you want to do and how to do it. Make the picture, don't take it.

For the absolute best results, always shoot at your camera's highest resolution (3648x2736) and at either ISO 64 or 100 (go ahead and use 100 since the difference is negligible). Use a tripod whenever possible, especially for landscapes (be sure to turn the image stabilization OFF when using a tripod).

So learn all about your camera from the Owner's Manual, slow down, think about what you want to do and how you can do it. READ & STUDY that Owner's Manual.

Contrary to what someone said in their answer, it is possible to achieve an in-focus subject with a blurry background with your camera. This information can be found at http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html If you simply type in the focal length, f-stop and subject distance the calculator will show you the zone of acceptable focus in front of and behind your subject. Here is one example: 27mm @ f2.8, focused to 10' - your zone of acceptable focus will be from ~ 9' 5" to ~ 10' 7". I guarantee you the background will be blurred unless your subject has their back against it. Of course, the farther away the background the more blurry it will be.

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