Learning digital photography

There are two things you need:

1. Camera and photography basics. You can get those from a Photogratphy for Dummies book, or a photography course (recommneded!)

2. Practice taking pictures, compositions, etc. Again - the course helps, especially since it gives you ideas and projects. If not, any online site where people review your stuff is a good place to try.

I had a hard time understanding exposure and aperture so what I did, selected one spot, put the camera on a tripod, wrote down all possible combinations of the exposure and aperture setting my camera would offer and shot pictures of same frame with these settings. Check later on on monitor to select what is the best and fathom more into that setting with respect to the lighting situation or overall composition of the shot. Read photography books and try to follow their techniques, like rule of third that I learnt while shooting sunrise and sunset from one of the photography book. Visit sites like pbase.com and try to analyse the shot/picture from the exif data, if possible. It helped a bit. Try to use the settings of your camera with respect to the lighting and metering options. I learnt this one exactly same as I learnt exposure and aperture settings. The performance usually varies from camera to camera..

One thing I would add is to define what you want to produce. I get questions all where people are either assuming a certain type of photography or they simply haven't defined what they want to be able to produce.

Digital is really irrelevent. Photography is photography and hasn't changed all that much in the last 40 years in terms of basics.

Another thing to try is find a local photographer and have them teach you the basics. This is cheaper in the long run because it is such a rapid process. Then when you go back to the book you will have already seen it and the book will help it sink in.

Sit down with your camera and the manuel and go through it until you run out of battery power or until your head is full.  Cover the lens with some kind of (glass) filter right out of the box to protect the lens.  And the finally buy a bigger storage card and another battery and shoot, shoot, shoot.   I started out with the Oly C-5060.