There is a dial right above the lever.  Turn it to the green box and your camera is ready to go to take snapshot style photos.  The camera will make all the settings you need automatically.  You just point and shoot.  The flash will even deploy if the camera determines it is needed. Most cameras will have a similar dial.  By turning the wheel counter clockwise you will access specific settings to photograph portraits, night scenes, sports, landscapes etc.  The camera does the work and you just aim and click. 

This is the creative zone of the camera and it will be where you can best deal with things like the fast moving sporting events in bright sun or dark arenas.  There is nothing wrong with using the automatic settings if they work for you.  In the early years of exploration of North America the legendary Hudson Bay Company warned its explorers and trappers that there was nothing to be gained by traveling tough for the sake of traveling tough.  In law and science there is the concept of Occam's Razor.  It states that when two theories seem correct, the simplest one is superior.  My favorite rock band had a philosophy that guided efforts: "The situation is the boss."

When you turn the camera on you can access this information screen by pushing the button labeled INFO. Depending on your model, you may need to push more than once or even use the MENU button.  Each camera may be different but on this Canon 60D there is a football shaped button to the right of the MENU and INFO buttons. It has a circle inside a box.  Push this and one of the settings on the screen will be highlighted.  The wheel right below the INFO button controls highlighting the screen.  Click on the left side of the wheel (9 o'clock position if it were a clock face) and the highlighting moves left.  Up (12 o'clock) , down (6 o'clock) and right (3 o'clock) are directed by pushing those parts of the wheel.

THESE THREE THINGS ARE THE MAIN THINGS TO ADJUST.
The camera is a light/image gathering device.

Basically, the M stands for manual.  Here you will control how long the shutter stays open to admit the light that brings you the target image.  This is called shutter speed or exposure. Here the camera is set at 1/125.  That means when you depress the shutter button, light will be allowed in to your sensor for 1 125th of a second.  Divide a second into 125 units and your sensor will be exposed for only one of those units.  That sounds fast but in photography it is rather slow.  A speeding baseball couldn't be photographed at that speed.  A runner would be a blur at best.  The pictured camera can actually be set to expose the sensor (the digital equivalent of film) for 1/8000th of a second.  At that speed a 100 MPH baseball can be frozen in mid flight so well that you could count the stitches on the ball.  Actually, this can be done at a speed a lot slower than 1/8000th.  The exposure or shutter speed on this camera can be slowed down all the way to 30 seconds.  In other words, the camera sensor is open for 30 seconds.  Excess light or any movement is your enemy here.  Many cameras have a B setting where a bulb is used to open and close the shutter for as long as you wish.

Your next creative control is for Aperture.  In the photo, F00 is the aperture setting.  The camera operates much as your eye's iris and pupil do to admit light.  Where your aforementioned shutter speed controls how long the sensor is exposed, the aperture controls how big the opening will be during that exposure.  Everyone has experienced going from a dark room into bright sunlight and being overwhelmed by the brightness.  Your iris had been open as wide as needed for the darkened room and it is slow to react to the bright light and remains open too wide.  The reverse happens when you go from  sunlight to darkness.  Your aperture setting controls the size of the opening when you make a photo. Here is the confusing part.  The aperture will be expressed as the letter F followed by a number.  In the above photo, an F00 is shown because I had no lens attached at the time.  In photography the SMALLER the F number, the LARGER is the opening.  Lenses get much better (and much more expensive)  with lower aperture numbers.  Thus an F1.8 admits more light than an F2.0.  These designations are called "stops" and lenses are said to be faster as the aperture number gets smaller.  My fastest (and thus best) 2 lenses are F1.8 and F2.8.  A typical Zoom lens that comes in a camera kit will be in a range of 3.5-5.6.  It would be called a slow lens .  Photographers try to buy the fastest (lowest F number or aperture) they can afford.  For action photography, the faster lens (with the bigger light admitting size and lowest f number) will enable you to use the fastest shutter speed as well as the next setting: ISO.

The final creative setting is called ISO.  It refers to the sensitivity of the sensor to light.  Again, the lower the number the better.  However, as the available natural or artificial lighting decreases, you will have to raise the ISO number.  The lower number as lower sensitivity to light and at say 100 ISO you'll get smaller grain and thus sharper photos.  At higher ISOs you'll get larger grains and less sharp photos.  The excess grain is called noise by photographers.  The camera in this article can shoot ISO settings from 100 to 12,800.   You would try to keep the ISO number as low as possible as sharpness will decline as the number increases.  At 12,800 the photos are very grainy (noisy).  There are processing programs such as Noise Ninja, Photo Studio and Lightroom, among others, that will help reduce the noise to much better levels.  I have shot at as high as 6400 and corrected the noise with such programs.  The AUTO ISO setting is useful.  You set the shutter speed and aperture and the camera picks the lowest ISO that will work.  The problem with AUTO ISO is when you have something bright in the photo that will mislead the computer into adjusting for just that bright object.  (ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization and in film it was called ASA.)

OK, your photos are too dark.  What do you do?  You can slow the shutter speed and/or lower the aperture to a lower F number and/or raise the ISO number.  You may have to adjust all three.  Photos too bright?  Try speeding up the shutter and/or closing down the aperture opening by raising the F number and/or Lower the ISO number to make your sensor less sensitive. You'll probably change all three.

Other than M (Manual), your camera will have other programs such as for Shutter Priority   (TV or Time Value For Canon,  S for Nikon and Minolta).  Aperture Priority (AV or Aperture Value for Canon and A for Nikon).  In TV you set the shutter speed and ISO and the camera picks the appropriate aperture.  In AV mode you pick  the aperture and ISO and the camera picks the shutter speed.  A lot of sports photographers like the AV mode especially outdoors with sun and cloud variations.  Other modes will include P for Program where the camera aids in adjusting the modes.  B stands for bulb and here you set the aperture and ISO and manually control the shutter speed by opening the shutter with one click and closing it with another.  C will stand for Custom Mode where you can go back to a programmed set of combinations that you frequently use.

OK, those are your creative categories.  Practice adjusting these various settings in different conditions and you might even take notes.  I believe that there are certain "sweet spots" for every camera and every situations.  Get the fastest lens you can afford but know that the ZOOM lens you got with the camera will work well with good lighting and the right aperture and ISO settings.

On this camera there is a button with a rectangular box with an arrow inside.  This button displays the last shot you took.  Turn the wheel above it to scroll through the other photos you've taken.  For now I would advise you not to delete photos from the camera.  You might be surprised to find you can "save" a shot with your processing app and besides, while deleting you might miss a good shot or (gasp) accidentally delete a great one.

I think it's safe to advise people to buy the best lens they can afford.  Many cameras come in a kit with a zoom lens somewhere between 50 and 300mm in an aperture range between F 3.5 and F 5.6.  This lens will only be a problem in low light situations where you can't use a flash or the movement of the object you're shooting is too fast to use a slower shutter speed. Later on you might consider the so called "nifty fifty" offered by several excellent manufacturers in an excellent F 1.8 and a great F 1.4.  The F 1.8 usually sells for only around $100!  I'm familiar with Sigma lenses and they have a 70-200 F 2.8 that is wonderful in low light.  There are teleconverters that increase the focal length of the lens they are attached to. The most common is a 2x often called a doubler.  Beware of quality concerns and note that if you put a lens or a lens-teleconverter on your camera that raises the lens F number above F 5.6 you will not be able to use your camera's auto focus.  That is a big deal.  Zoom lenses are very popular and affordable.  A 50-200mm zoom rated at F 3.5-F 5.6 will have an F 3.5 at the 50mm end and progress as you'd expect to the F 5.6 at the 200mm end.  You would lower your shutter speed and/or raise your ISO to compensate as you altered  the aperture.  Remember that if you make the opening (aperture) smaller (with a high f number), you'll have to allow the light to enter longer (shutter speed) and/or use more sensitive sensor setting (ISO).

Crop factor refers to the fact that normal sized cameras make a photo that shows less of the target than a full frame camera.  The normal frame camera  (the Canon 60D shown above and used to make the Buddha images is such a camera) can be used in the enlargement of a photo from regular size to the full frame size.  For this purpose, a Canon 60D using a 70mm lens produces a photo as large as a 112mm lens.  The enlargement factor between this camera and a full frame camera (equal to the old standard 35mm in size) is 1.6x.  The 190mm lens is equal to a 304mm lens. My 400mm lens set up is equal to a 640mm lens. 

Of course quality will drop when you either enlarge a photo of compress it to make it take up less space and load faster.  Think of a Buddhist Mandala.  These are sand drawings we make and then destroy .  This is about photography and not Buddhism so I'll leave the interpretation of this to you. (Hint: It's about the impermanence of all things)  If you wanted to enlarge a sand painting you would have to move the colored grains further apart.  The image wouldn't be as sharp but it would be larger.  To compress the photo from say 10 MB to a much smaller or lighter size you would also remove grains of sand. This would lower the total weight of the painting while keeping the image the same size but quality would suffer.  In both operations you would lose clarity and sharpness.  The most common form of file format for compression is called jpeg  (JPEG or JPG).  It stands for Joint Photographic Expert Group.  All things being equal, a 10 MB photo is far superior than the same photo compressed to 10 KB       

Optical Stabilization (OS) and Image Stabilization (IS) are computerized motors that compensate for excess movement and camera shake when you use them when making a photo.  Make sure you turn them off (usually a switch on the side of the lens) when not in use and don't use them with a tripod although some experts say a monopod is OK to use.  They add cost to the lens.