[Nicole]

Some of these answers may be opinions, but I'll try to support them with links for you You've got a lot of questions

Originally Posted by winterminute

1) Does the camera do any metering when shooting in manual mode?

It should unless it's a camera without a light meter built in. I would guess that your camera has some sort of meter that it will show you when you're in manual mode. It should look something like +....0....- or something similar to that. It seems like most people who shoot digital (me included) do not know what the proper settings for a perfect 0 are by heart. Plus there's always the use of artistic sort of things like really shallow depth of field where you'd want a faster shutter speed than a formula might say.

Originally Posted by winterminute

2) What's the best type of metering?

That depends on your personal preference and the scene that you're shooting. If you understand the various metering modes, you'll be able to better select which one you want to use for the given situation. But basically, what the camera is looking for is medium grey given the scene and the area that you've told it to look at. If you tell it to look at the whole scene (matrix / evaluative metering) you will get a different result than if you just have it look at one place (spot metering).

Originally Posted by winterminute

3) I've read that you should set your exposure -1 or +1 (I can't remember which) if you're shooting digital, any truth to this?

I think that this one depends on the camera. But I also think that those numbers seem really extreme based on my shooting habits. With my camera I tend to underexpose by 0.3 to 0.7. One thing that I have heard about exposing digital cameras is to shoot with the histogram as far to the right as possible without clipping anything. Which I can honestly say I don't fully understand yet But there are a few more articles which are helpful here and here.

Originally Posted by winterminute

4) What is EV? Is it a universal number or a relative number based on how far away you are from a correctly exposed shot? Or is this a value your camera produces that changes from camera to camera?

EV seems to be a universal number. But I'm not 100% on this one in particular.

Originally Posted by winterminute

5) When they talk about correctly exposed shots, do they mean an EV of 0?

Aside from the theory that there is no such thing as correct exposure (based on using under or overexposure in an artistic way), correct exposure is not really well defined, but it has to do with histograms and everything. It also depends a lot on what you're going for. Kind of a cop out answer, but it's true

Originally Posted by winterminute

6) HDRs confuse me When they' talking about taking multiple shots for HDRs, they talk about taking it -1/0/+1. From what I'm reading there are only 3 factors in exposure (duh, the exposure triangle), but I don't understand how I can change any of them without changing the "feel" of shot which would create problems when I merge them into a single HDR.
-- Longer exposure would create streaks
-- Larger DOF would change what was in focus vs out of focus

You would want to keep the aperture the same so that everything is still in the same focus, but change the shutter speed in increase and decrease exposure. HDR seems to work best on relatively still scenes, though clouds and stuff still seem to come out ok.

Originally Posted by winterminute

7) What's a DOF calculator? When would I use one? Is this a mathematical equation I use on site or something that a camera tells you.

Yes, it's something that's often on a website, like the ones here or here. Some cameras have the ability to do a depth of field preview, but even if your camera doesn't, you'll start getting a feel for what kind of depth of field you want with practice, and then it comes down to deciding how much of your picture you want in focus based on past experience. I'm sure there is also a mathematical formula floating around out there. But it all has to do with how much of the picture is in focus.