An SLR is a big jump from most point-and-shoots! I’m talking about quality of the photos, price of the equipment and lenses, and skill-level required. There is much more manual control involved, often by directly changing the lens (for things like focus, zoom, and aperture), you should be comfortable with having interchangeable lenses, and you should be comfortable carrying around a carrying case for the camera and the lenses.

Sometimes it could be better to transition to professional photography with a high-end point-and-shoot rather than a low-end SLR. For example, I have the Canon SX40 HS (which offers manual mode adjustments through the camera’s menus, not the lens), and it takes very sharp pictures with a single *very* versatile lens. (24mm to 840mm zoom equivalent, and at 24mm it can focus on dust on the lens itself.)

1. White balance is how the camera makes colors look correctly. Different lighting conditions have different colors, but you want objects to look correctly in all photos regardless of the lighting. So when someone sets the white balance, they’re telling the camera what kind of lighting there is, and the camera then adjust the colors accordingly. “Preset” white balance modes are specific settings, such as incandescent lighting or in sunlight. So for example, if you are outside in sunlight, you can select a “sunlight” preset, and the camera will make it so the colors look the way they should. Most cameras also have an “auto” white balance mode that automatically sets the white balance. Also, many cameras have “custom” white balance where you use can hold a piece of white paper in front of the camera, tell the camera that it is white, and the camera then knows the white balance.

2. Metering represents how the camera figures out how bright or dark to make the picture. Part of a picture might have a bright or dark object that you don’t want to focus on, so the different metering modes allow you to tell the camera what part of the picture is important, and it can use that as the basis of how to set up the exposure. “Multi” uses various parts of the frame to determine lighting conditions. “Center-weighted” focuses on the middle of the image to determine lighting. “Partial” is a mode that takes a small part of the frame, not necessarily the center (it could be a face or other area of interest depending on the camera’s features), and uses that as the basis of lighting.