Well after getting my camera I finally had a day to experiment with it and see what i can learn from it. I recently bought some filters as well, Hoya R72 infra red, Hoya Cir polarising and Hoya graduated grey filter.
I decided to go to Alton water, it's a resovoir quite close to where I live. I spent about 5 hours walking around spending a lot of time photographing a few things, really taking my time with settings, still the majority turned out too dark to be used and i hadn't noticed a mark on my filter which showed up pretty badly in most of the shots.
Its still a big learning curve for me though switching over to DSLR and using filters and I'm hoping I will learn quickly what I'm doing, I've already learned so much more today and I'm looking forward to going out again with my camera. Hopefully my new pictures will be appreciated and enjoyed.