Welcome back! It is nice to see you back again.

You don’t need to know anything about internal combustion to operate an automobile, and you really don’t need to understand digital technology to use a point-and-shoot digital camera, either. Both devices are so automated these days that there’s not a lot for the driver/shooter to do other than point the machinery in the right direction and press the gas pedal or shutter release.

Even if you decide to use manual controls on a non-dSLR, the only thing you must understand is that this button makes the picture lighter or darker, that one helps freeze action, and this other button changes the way the camera focuses.

It’s a different ballgame with a digital SLR, and most of us wouldn’t have it any other way. Unlike point-and-shoot digital photography, where it’s almost impossible to adjust depth-offield, and usable ISO ratings range from ISO 100 to ISO 100, the technology built into a dSLR does allow you to make a difference creatively and technically, if you know what you’re doing.

For the average serious photographer, that’s what taking pictures is all about. With a digital SLR, it’s easy to use depth-of-field to manipulate your images, but you need to understand how digital cameras work with lenses and their apertures. The “graininess” of your pictures is under your control, too, but depends heavily on things like the size of the sensor, the sensitivity rating you’re using, and what kind of noise reduction technology is built into your camera.

Would you like to take a picture in which a runner is frozen in time, but a streaky blur trails behind him like The Flash in comic books? You’d better understand the difference between front-sync and rear-sync shutter settings.

Interested in using a super-long telephoto lens without a tripod? Step up and learn about image stabilizers. If you’re who I think you are, you don’t see understanding digital SLR technology as a daunting task, but as an interesting challenge. By the time someone is ready to step up to a dSLR, he or she is looking forward to taking greater control over every aspect of the picture-taking process. Similarly, a photo enthusiast who already has SLR experience with film cameras finds the challenge one that’s easy to undertake.

That’s especially true because the technologies used for film and digital SLRs have converged dramatically over the years. Solid-state technology began to worm itself into conventional cameras more than 20 years ago, in the form of electronic metering, electronic shutters, programmed exposure modes, and automatic focus. The first digital SLRs were created by grafting a digital sensor into the back of a film SLR and then tacking on some electronics to process and store the images.

Even today, when digital SLRs are using fewer off-the-shelf film camera components, there are many models so similar to the film camera counterparts from the same vendor that if you were handed one at random, you’d probably have to check it out for a few seconds to decide if it were the film or electronic version.

The most comforting thing about digital SLR technology is that, for the most part, these cameras were designed by engineers who understand photography. Many of the point-and-shoot digital cameras I have used appear to have been designed by a techie who was creating cell phones or PDAs last week, and then moved over to digital cameras this week. They operate like computers rather than cameras, have features that nobody in their right mind actually needs, and often are completely unusable for the kinds of photography they are intended for.

For example, I recently tested a pocket-sized digicam that had no optical viewfinder at all. It was necessary to frame every picture using the back-panel LCD, which, unfortunately, completely washed out when used outdoors at any time of the day when the sun was out. Another camera had a sensational burst mode that could snap off six frames in about 1.5 seconds. Casual sports photographers would love that, except this particular model provided no way to set the shutter speed high enough to stop action, nor was there even a Sports shooting mode.

Ack! In contrast, digital SLRs are designed by people who understand your needs. Most of them have been designing film cameras for many years, and know from the feedback they receive what photographers want. So, learning dSLR technology will be rewarding for you because you’ll come to understand exactly how to use features that have been designed to help you be a better and more creative photographer.