Madcap Shutterbugging

So over the last two days, I have been ravaging Seattle like Godzilla with a camera, kind of taking aim at anything I pretty much could in an attempt to learn my new camera's settings. I've been screwing around with the F and ISO settings, and trying to figure out the focal points and such within the viewfinder. While I feel like I am making some food progress, I know I have quite a ways to go. As per the instructions of my friends Forrest and Ben, I have completely abandoned all 'automatic' settings and am completely doing this by hand now.

One issue I am encountering is one of the 'true picture' versus what the live view is telling me what it will look like. I doubt there is any way around this- its a smaller, more condensed pic and its going to vary a little bit on coloration and such depending on the angle I hold it at. This is primarily an issue when it comes to light saturation when I'm tinkering with ISO and F, and at night when the small pic looks awesome but the big one is still squiggy.

But hey! Nothing I can do about that, so I wasted a paragraph. I just thought I'd mention it. Having said that, I can see some improvements. Unfortunately I lack a bus terminal at 11pm with a leather jacket-toting friend to try and recreate Day 1. I'll just have to wait until next Wednesday for that.

One of my original theories on my failure at night was that I needed a tripod. And while I still believe this would be helpful, I no longer believe it to be the sole overriding factor of my earlier failure with Ghen-ki. Below, I've taken two shots towards SLU/Downtown from my rooftop deck. One is with the camera balanced carefully on an undisturbed flat surface. The other, is taken in my hands.
Oddly enough the more 'level-looking' was taken by my hands. I also succeeded in the following with just my hands.
I played with my settings a lot and I found HUGE discrepancies between the effects of the sky and my pictures based on where I aimed my camera's focal point. In some, it was 'nearly day' looking, while in others, it appeared to be very 'night like.' I'm guessing the focal points (and possibly the annoying spotlight on the roof) had a lot of say in this. For instance. In the following attempt of downtown, I 'aimed high' and the result is a squiggy, crappy piece of the 'near day.'

However, the piece exactly before (below), I 'aimed low.' I made no changes to ISO, F or where I was focused, nor to my focal points (I don't think).
The result is painfully 2-D and far too dark (despite it being only 6:20pm at the time). So this definitely merits further study... I just wish I knew where to start!!