When I first wrote this, I'd been seeing a lots of forum posts from new Canon D30 owners. Now there are new 10D and 300D/Digital Rebel owners facing the same issues: there are different ways of asking the question, but essentially, it boils down to "what do I do now?". Another common theme has been laments from people who are disappointed with the results they are achieving with their expensive new acquisition. What I try to do in this page is distil some of my experience and the advice that has been offered by others.
Much of what I have written has been from my own experience, but I include stuff from other people (with acknowledgements where possible). The D30 was and still is a wonderful camera, but it does have quirks and limitations; the 10D is improved, but not perfect by any means. There are many who argue that it is not the camera that takes the photograph, but the photographer. "It's possible to take great pictures with a throw-away camera", they say. Gross and Shapiro () make the distinction between Great and Little Understanding. Making great pictures with an "unconstricted awareness", however, must be based on a mastery of craft and technique:
"Before one can transcend technical knowledge, however, one must have technical knowledge."
In other words, if you want to take decent pictures consistently, you've got to know what you're doing.
With a throw-away Kodak camera, requirements for a sound technique to take a photograph are fairly basic - "hold the camera still", "don't put fingers in front of the lens", "press the shutter button gently", "take the camera to a good photo lab" - the D30 (substitute your own camera here) is a bit more complicated. I did a count of the different settings for the various controls and menu options. Taking into account only those that would directly affect the actual image or image capture process, there are in excess of 1.5 million permutations!!! Of course, some combinations don't make sense or aren't relevant in every situation, such as 1st or second curtain flash sync, but still...
I am not going to offer advice on how to take great pictures, but try to provide some guidelines to help new users get technically better results sooner.
At this point, I'll make an apology to all you Mac users out there. Any discussion on software will be related to the PC because that's what I use and that's what I know. The last Apple hardware I used extensively was the Apple IIe. 
If you have any comments or suggestions for changes, please let me know.