Stardust, the two important things from the manual to know about are Aperture and Shutter. Low aperture allows you to shoot a subject with a blurry background. Shutter speed allows you to decide how quickly you want the camera to shoot a picture, this allows you to capture fast action (like a flying bird) without any blurriness or shoot in the night without a flash.
Just take your time with it. Nothing wrong in using it as a point-and-shoot. It's only when you need specific types of shots, then you need the manual. Generally people buy expensive cameras to do just that, but it's not always the case!
Thanks for that. I'll try playing about with those parameters next time I take the cam out.
I like that blurred background effect, but didn't know how to get it XD I would just rely on the camera's auto settings, sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't also the focusing as well, :/ Yeah, I need to do some homework XD