I would suggest shooting anything and everything, which you will probably do anyway. I have so many gigs of photos around the house of nothing from when I was learning my D50. I would shoot really close macros, people shots, landscapes. Some things I found the most useful would be picking a scene and playing with the aperture, as wide open as you can go, most likely f4-5.6 to f16. More than that isn't necessary and won't really get any sharper or a deeper depth of field. I would play with manual focus as close as you can get and move the camera back until the closest thing is in focus. Play with the metering modes, center and matrix settings to see how it effects your shots. Meter for bright areas and see how the rest of the scene goes dark, meter for dark areas and watch the sky get blown out, try to find an area with a usable balnce for both shadows and highlights. Practice locking the focus and recomposing the shot. Once you save some pennies, find a circular polarizer, I used this more than anything else to help improve my shots and bought it used at a camera store for less than $25. Most importantly read the manual, when you come across something new play with those settings and see what happens. hope this helps.
Joe
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