Despite the fact that I am the humble owner of several rather nice cameras, what I know about how to use them in anything but Auto mode could easily be written on a very small scrap of paper.
With the advent of my new Canon 5D MkII into the family I decided that it was high time I learned to do a little more than point and shoot. To that end I signed up to take a class a the local Art League and am into week 2 of the course.
It's turning out to be an interesting adventure. The teacher is, primarily, very good at marketing her own camera shop. Thankfully she also knows where all the bells and buttons are on each person's camera. She says she teaches Photoshop classes, but I have caught her out in a number of small "porkie pies" on that subject and so far have restrained myself from pointing out that what she is saying is not "quite correct" - ahem!
She also wants us to email her our weekly images so that she can check them out and has stressed that we cannot modify the images - and, according to her, she will know if we do as she can see if the metadata has been changed. Little does she know that you CAN strip the metadata from an image (and many professional photographers do just that - especially when sending out proofs).
I think that was "porkie pie #44".
Anyway, I have successfully managed to shoot these with varying degrees of aperture setting, shutter speed and altered the ISO here and there, but still, old habits die hard and I have resorted to changing the White Balance in Camera Raw and applying the odd Levels Adjustment in Photoshop.
So, "Shoot me" - heck, I can live in BOTH worlds :-)