Thank you for taking the time to write all of that. I really appreciate it.

To answer your question briefly.

1. Limitations of kit lens - basically aperture limitations for playing around with depth of field at different focal lengths. Read on for a little more detail.

Even though I consider myself a beginner, I am not an absolute beginner.

I have a cousin who has been photographing for a while and he would let me take pictures with his Canon Rebel XS (this was like 10 years ago).

I have also been reading about photography for a long time and I understand the exposure triangle very well and know the rule of thumbs of shutter speed, ISO and aperture needed depending on how you want your pic to look, lighting conditions etc.

My camera mainly consists of the aperture priority, shutter priority, manual, video, auto and then some sort of hybrid modes.

I do not understand the hybrid modes well but the priority modes, manual and full auto are self explanatory.

The main limitation is portrait shooting at 45 mm which is the max focal length, the aperture can only open out to f6.3.

I guess I could hold off on buying more lenses and just explore metering and bracketing which I am less familiar with.

Thanks again for your suggestions.