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Digital cameras now dominate photography. Most of us have abandoned film cameras in favour of this new technology that lets us view images straight away, frame photos with the screen and re-use memory cards. There's also a vast number of features on digital cameras that you just won't get on a film camera.

However, nearly all of us simply switch the camera's settings to automatic and leave it there. It is often a lot easier to do this than try and work your way through a jargon-filled manual. This is a missed opportunity. Even basic digital cameras offer a wealth of features that can be used to improve your snaps. For example, the kind of indoor lighting that can cause film photos to come out looking orange or green can be easily compensated for using digital cameras. And while camera film is available in a variety of sensitivities, you have to finish the roll before you change it. A digital camera lets you switch to a higher sensitivity for just one shot if you like, before switching straight back to normal again.

Here we'll explain the benefits of digital photography and how to make the most of your camera. We'll also show you how to take more creative photos, controlling

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the exposure, depth of field, and using the flash for special effects. So break away from Auto and find out what you and your digital camera are capable of.

The term megapixel means one million pixels. It is calculated by multiplying the number of horizontal and vertical pixels in an image. So if an image has 2,816x2,112 pixels, for example, it will have 5,947,392 pixels in total, or around six megapixels for short.

An 8-megapixel image will typically have 3,264x2,448 pixels, while a 10-megapixel image will have 3,648x2,736 pixels. In these two instances each additional two million pixels is equivalent to having around 400 extra pixels horizontally and 300 extra vertically.

These extra pixels allow you to zoom in on your subject or make larger prints without reducing quality. So-called 'photographic quality' prints from labs require 300 pixels per inch, so a 6-megapixel image with 2,816x2,112 pixels can be enlarged to around 9x7in before it loses any quality. Increasing the image to eight megapixels gives you an extra inch in height, and 10 megapixels give you another inch again.

More megapixels are not always better, though. In theory they should be, but if a manufacturer increases the resolution without making the sensor larger, each pixel will become smaller. This makes them less sensitive to light and more susceptible to random speckles of electronic noise, especially in dim lighting. The finer the pixels, the better the lens needs to be.

This is why digital SLRs, with their physically bigger sensors, produce better-quality images than compacts with the same number of megapixels. It is also why the tiny sensors and lenses in mobile phone cameras typically provide poor-quality images regardless of the number of megapixels.