Question for you photography nuts

[12thmonkey]

That's a nice camera outfit, Alpha. Those wikipedia articles are decent. There's also plenty of good books out there...check the library. 

A google search brought up several online manuals for your camera too. This one's a lo-res, but still readable scan of the original manual. And there's plenty more.

http://www.canonfd.com/pdf/a1.pdf

Have fun with it...and post back with any questions. It seems like there are plenty of people on here who know what they are doing when it comes to photography.