Although the Nikon D40 has now been discontinued it continues to be one of the most popular and widely used entry level DSLR's.  There are many reasons the D40 is such a popular model and price is one of them, I picked mine up brand new for £225 and I was very lucky as even second hand now you will be lucky to find one under this price!  There any many other redeeming features to the camera such as its lightweight, compact body, user friendly controls and excellent image quality. Lets talk about settings on the camera, apart from the usual auto programmed settings the D40 has 4 other user controlled settings M, A, S & P.

M - Manual - lets you control almost all settings on the camera, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, Metering and many others, however the settings you cannot change are exposure & flash compensation, it does let you change these settings but they wont take effect on the actual image.  Shutter speed can be adjusted by turning the dial on the top right of the camera body, however in order to change your aperture in manual you must turn the settings dial to A (aperture priority) select the desired aperture using the dial and then back to M to adjust the shutter speed, you must do this every time you want to change your aperture.

A - Aperture priority - this is as M apart from shutter speed & aperture, this time you choose the aperture and the camera decides the shutter speed.  If I am taking fast paced sports I generally use this setting on the smallest aperture number around F4 (big hole) this gives a nice shallow depth of field and a fast shutter speed, if the light from the poor British weather isnt so good then I would probably use ISO400 insteat of my usual 200 also.

S - Shutter Priority - as M & A but this time you control the shutter speed rather than the aperture which the camera will decide for you.