| Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF | |
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Mastering the Nikon D300 | 
 enlarge | Author: Darrell Young
Publisher: Rocky Nook
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $26.37
You Save: $13.58 (34%)
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 5769
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.5
ISBN: 1933952342
Dewey Decimal Number: 771.32
EAN: 9781933952345
ASIN: 1933952342
Publication Date: October 31, 2008
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Product Description
Mastering the Nikon D300 by Nikonian Darrell Young provides a wealth of information and professional insights for owners of this powerful new camera. Each chapter explores the features and capabilities of the D300 in detail, surpassing basic user manuals by providing step-by-step menu setting adjustments coupled with illustrations and logical explanations for each option. Darrell Young's writing style allows the reader to follow directions in a friendly and informative manner, as if a friend dropped in to share his experienced knowledge without "talking down" to you, explaining the how and the why. The learning experience for D300 beginners (and refresher information for professionals) goes beyond the camera itself. When camera features and options expand to additional Nikon equipment (such as with the use of optional Speedlights) Darrell adds the necessary information. Young's frequent references to user manuals provided by Nikon (complete with specific page references) allow the reader to easily navigate past the "confusion factor" that often comes with new equipment. Mastering the Nikon D300 is the inaugural title kicking off the Nikonians Press imprint "the exciting, new joint venture between Nikonians and Rocky Nook.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 I give it an A+ November 28, 2008
Jeffery Suddeth (Wheaton, IL USA)
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
I have been using a Nikon D300 since December 2007 (a couple months after they came out) and before I read this I was already pretty comfortable with the camera. I figured there were probably some tips and tricks that I might pick up from this book so I gave it a read. Holy cow. One third through the book I had already learned a ton.
Being about this particular camera, I was concerned that the book would read like an improved writing of the manual. But that is not the case. The author has an interesting writing style, mixing his one experiences and tips in with the technical information.
The author doesn't just talk about how to use the camera. He talks about why to use it this way. When should you use Programmed Auto mode? When should you do a custom white balance? And why might that custom white balance fail? In fact, his discussion on white balance is one of the best I've ever read. He doesn't just show you the different ways of setting it, he explains what WB is and why you should set it yourself, rather than leaving the camera on Auto WB.
He also gives a very detailed discussion of the histogram, contrast, and relates what you see on the camera to what you would see or do in post processing.
Autofocus is another topic that most SLR shooters don't know enough about. In this book the author clearly explains the different Autofocus modes and areas and when to use them.
I found his discussion of the shooting menu banks and custom settings banks to be very useful. One day I came home to find my wife trying to use my D300 to take a picture of my kids in the living room. She had no clue what she was doing and was trying to use my 200 mm lens! Well, this book taught me how to store my "pro" settings and the "wife" settings into these banks so that if my wife wants to use the camera I can put everything on full auto for her with a couple clicks without losing my settings - just by switching banks.
He ends the book with a chapter on Nikon's Creative Lighting System, which is a great lead into the next Nikonians Press book about that very topic.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to really understand their D300 camera.
Author Rating November 3, 2008
Darrell R. Young (Knoxville, TN, USA)
11 out of 20 found this review helpful
As the author, I am a bit biased as to book content, which I think is absolutely marvelous. :-)
However, I did want to comment on the quality of the book. Rockynook/Nikonians has done an excellent job in editing and laying this book out. The quality of the book is very high. It has a heavy glossy cover, which will withstand a lot of use without wearing out. The inside pages are of a heavy stock also, and will take a lot of thumbing through pages. The illustrations and images are very sharp and easily readable. I find this to be very important, since the D300 has upwards of 1000 menu screens, and most of them are listed in the book. All photography is reproduced on a level that looks like a photograph. This is NOT a cheaply made book!
I am very well pleased with the book's quality. I think you'll feel the same. I hope you like the content, too. I've just read over a couple of chapters, and it helped me remember things I'd forgotten since writing this book. I've carefully written it to make things easily understandable. The D300 is very complex. This book makes the camera understandable and its advanced features much easier to use. Even if I hadn't written it, I'd still buy it.
I want to thank you in advance for buying my new book. If you like it, I'll try to write one for all of Nikon's new camera releases. The book gives you a web address to contact me personally, and gives me a place to add new information, as I write it. This is an ongoing project with me, as I keep on using my D300 daily. I hope to talk with you soon!
Warm regards,
Darrell Young (Author)
Great book to learn all the features of the Nikon D300 November 8, 2008
Adrion Ramos
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
I just started to read the book and I really like it. This is a great supplement to the Nikon Manual that came with the camera. It clearly explains the features/settings on all the MENUs, switches, etc. and Darrell adds short tips on how to use them.
This is the book/manual that I was looking for. It is direct to the point and it does not have useless chapters on composition or digital photo editing tips. If I wanted to learn more about composition or photo editing, then I would certainly get a book that is focused on that subject.
Btw, it is good companion book as you can easily put this in your camera bag. Good for those times when you forget how to setup certain features of the D300.
Where Have You Been? November 28, 2008
Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
"Mastering the Nikon D300" is a joint effort of the publisher, Rocky Nook and Nikonians, a web site and bulletin board for about 150,000 Nikon enthusiasts. In the interest of full disclosure I have been a member of Nikonians almost since its inception in 2000.
Because Nikon's "D300 User's Manual" is not the easiest book to read, many users have looked for some other information that will make the use of this very sophisticated piece of machinery easier. The author presents us with a summary of the features of the D300; explores the many modes of the metering, focus, and white balance systems; explains how to use the menus to select the approximately 300 options that configure the camera; and finishes with a brief explanation of the camera's use as a part of the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS).
I certainly thought that, after reading five other books on the D300, and using the camera for over a year, there was nothing that Darrell Young could teach me. But I was wrong. It was not so much that the author provided new information, as that his style was easy to read, and placed emphasis upon subjects in a way that made me pay attention to important features that I had missed. For example, I'm almost embarrassed to say, I had never clearly distinguished between shooting menu banks and custom settings banks. Young's organization of these two distinct functions into separate chapters made the difference clear to me and allowed me to make some changes to my D300 that have made life a lot easier.
I thought about saying that, being published more than a year after the camera was available, this book might be described as too little, too late. (I'll return to "too little".) It would have been good to have had this book earlier in the life cycle of my ownership. But because, despite its technical nature, it was easily accessible, I was able to go through it carefully and pick up on the use of some settings which I had either missed or not realized the importance of. It served me as a good second look at what I was doing.
The D300 book to which it bears the closest resemblance is Simon Stafford's "Magic Lantern Guides: Nikon D300 (Magic Lantern Guides)." Both look at the technical aspects of the camera, without much concern for art or photography fundamentals. (If you want a book with a broader view, consider David Busch's "David Busch's Nikon D300 Guide to Digital SLR Photography".) As such both are more aimed at experienced users who just want to optimize their camera for their kind of photography. Stafford seems a bit more willing to go out on a limb with recommendations, but he also seems more pedantic. Young seems to hold back just a bit on recommendations (there are some D300 features that I think are absurd and that he just tells you how to set up) but he's clearly user-friendly.
The book is not without its faults. At the "duh!" level, the author doesn't tell you that you access the menus by pressing the "Menu" button. When he explains that you can set up dynamic autofocus areas as 9, 21 or 51 points he doesn't explain why more is not better (sampling more points may slow down autofocus). When he discusses the CLS system he doesn't mention that you can solve the problem of subjects who squint from commander pre-flashes with an SG-31R IR panel as well as a much more expensive SU800.
Then there is the too little. The type in this book is so tiny that I could barely read it, even with my glasses. Come on, Rocky Nook. Make the type bigger!
Notwithstanding these petty comments, if you want a technical guide to setting up your Nikon D300, you can't do better then this.
Excellent Choice December 1, 2008
The Book Collector (California)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is the best book on the Nikon D300 I have read.
It gave me the information I needed on how to operate the camera in a simple straight forward language.
It is an excellent supplement to the official Nikon D300 Users Manual. This book is NOT a course in photography or the history of cameras development. You do not have to wade through information you do not really need, as you find in other much thicker books on the D300.
It is a great "hands on" manual on how to use and take advantage of the so many benefits the Nikon D300 offers.
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