Know your camera's controls

To take advantage of great photographic opportunities that may last only a moment, it's important that you become very familiar with the controls on your camera.  It's also important that you know which controls you would use when fractions of second may mean the difference between getting a great shot or losing it. For example, earlier this year I led a photo tour to Morocco. In the blue city of Chefchaouen I was walking along a street and passed the open door to a small hotel.  The architecture and the color was great, but what made this photo opportunity particularly compelling was the white cat sitting in the perfect place looking right at me.  It didn't move a muscle as I quickly put the camera to my eye and shot, and within a few seconds it climbed down and the moment was over.  Without even taking a light reading, I set the ISO very high because it was so dark -- I selected 4000 -- and put the camera on Program mode.  Depth of field wasn't an option here simply because the light level was so low, and P mode gives me the fastest shutter speed possible minus 1/3 f/stop.  On Program mode, all I had to do was make sure my shutter speed was fast enough.  Since I was shooting with a 24mm focal length, I decided 1/40th would give me a sharp picture.  I didn't want to go higher on the ISO, so I settled for 1/40th at f/4.  I didn't use a tripod because there was just no time to set it up.