I thought others might be interested in some helpful sites as I find them. (yes, I know this is way too basic for many of you)

28 days with a DSLR
I finally have a basic grasp of ISO, shutter speed and aperture and how they affect my pictures. I am still working on f stop.

Tutorial Thread
A photography forum page with a list of links for beginners.

If you have found something that's helpful, post it. I need all the help I can get.

Laura, both look like intersting sites. One thing I would say about the 28 days site is to click on the "28 days with a DSLR" text in the bar towards the top of the page. This will take you to a nice summary page which lists each day with a brief summary of what was covered. Didn't work thru the entire site but it does seem to present lots of info in easy to understand format.

Thanks for sharing.

You can get a specific DVD that deals with lessons on you specific camera. You can get a discount on ebay.
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=...-All-Categories

f-stop is a measure of the aperture they are the same.

Here's a link to some tables that I created to keep track of the impact of Aperture/Shutter/ISO on images:

CLICK HERE

The top few lines shows the possible ranges for these three factors on a Nikon D5000. The next three sections show equivalent settings by keeping 2 of the 3 factors constant and varying the third. At the top of each section are <<< and >>> to indicate the impact on the images by choosing settings in those directions from the mid-point.

For example increasing the ISO makes the files "noisy" (what we called grain on film)

Increasing the shutter speed (faster) stops more action.

Decreasing the aperture (making the opening smaller) provides more depth of field.

Thanks John! I think I have it now. f stop is an expression of the aperture size, but inverted. f 1.8 is a larger opening than f 2.8 The actual aperture size or opening varies for a particular f stop number, depending on the focal length of the lens.
Increasing ISO increases exposure and noise.
Decreasing shutter speed increases exposure and increases blurring from any motion.
Decreasing f stop - which increases aperture - increases exposure and decreases depth of field.

Actual application...Bright day and my picture is too white - over exposed. I can either decrease ISO, increase f stop, or increase shutter speed.

That's it Laura.

And with a digital camera set on "Auto" you can view what the suggested f/stop and shutter speed will be (you might need to depress the button a bit.)

Then you can shift to Manual "M" or Shutter "T" priority or Aperture "A" priority and adjust the settings to try out different effects -- like using a slower shutter speed to make the cars rushing by a bit blurred.

Adjusting the shutter speed from 1/30th to 1/60th reduces by one-half the amount of light that reaches the sensor.

To reduce the amount of light by one-half using the f-stop, go to the next smaller f-stop (i.e. from f8 to f11)

To reduce the amount of light by one-half using the ISO, reduce the ISO by one-half of what it was (i.e. from ISO 400 to ISO 200)

While not an online site I would highly recommend Understanding Exposure from Bryan Peterson.

Great book, really helped me a lot and has great reviews online.