Congratulations on your new purchase 1Ds. I bought one and it is also my first digital camera. I have been a Medium Format believer. I find the Canon ergonomics was great since for such a complex camera, all the buttons and the human interface was well thought out. It is so easy to learn to use them and no need to always resort to the thick user manual. This is exceptionally designed.
Well I have it since Friday 4th and as you said to learn the menu is very fast because it is intuitive. Very well designed from Canon.
I had to wait until saturday when I got my CF card reader
About exposing I have been playind around especially with the different white balances as well as the °K settings and from my first impressions I would say if you can guess your Color temperature settings within about +- 300 degrees you get good results. But this is just a first impression.
I am approaching this quite calm and do not want to get disappointed because of some rush, etc.
Yesterday I made the first trial print and I was astonished about the result in color as well as in print.
I was just playing around in my living room and made a photo with 12V Halogen light lamps, set the Kelvin to ~3500K and I did not have to color correct anything.
before that I made one shot with AWB and one with the tungsten sign. All 3 were acceptable. OK some hotspots but minimum.
Just some sharpening and resizing for the print. I made 2 12x18" prints, one full frame and one just a quarter of it simulating a 24x36" print. The resizing eas made without using more info than given, with this I mean I took the 72dpi and resized it up to 114,5dpi for printing and so you do not add any info. Very interesting results.
But what I have seen up to now it is an amazing Beast