Glad to be of help - and you can't say I didn't warn you.
Just another word on hand held. It is very hard to hold the camera steady enough to catch the focus with hand held. I found that by doing things like holding the subject in your left hand (eg a stick with a small insect on one end) and resting the camera on your left arm works well. That ensures that while the camera and subject may move, they move together. Resting the arm holding the camera on a tree or other steady object is also good, provided the subject stays still and is within range. I always used the flash in manual as ETTL never worked very well. One thing about flash is that you don't have to worry about the distant background as there isn't any. It is black.
With a tripod and no flash you need to worry about the background. The lens picks up bright spots that are way out of the supposed field of view, but once you get used to that you can get some really good photos.