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David Busch's Nikon D300 Guide to Digital SLR Photography | 
 enlarge | Author: David D. Busch
Publisher: Course Technology PTR
Category: Book
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $19.79
You Save: $10.20 (34%)
New (17) Used (5) from $19.74
Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 1182
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 1598635344
Dewey Decimal Number: 775
EAN: 9781598635348
ASIN: 1598635344
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Have you unpacked your new Nikon D300 digital SLR camera and want to get started right away taking professional quality pictures? David Busch s Nikon D300 Guide to Digital SLR Photography will show you how, when, and why to use all the cool features, controls, and functions of your camera to take great photographs of anything. After a brief introduction to the camera to help you get your bearings, you ll dive right into all the exciting, innovative capabilities of the D300 including the focus controls, flash synchronization options, how to choose lenses, and which exposure modes are best. Beautiful, full-color images illustrate where the essential buttons and dials are, and you ll find tips and techniques that can be applied to any type of photography to help you take better pictures with your new digital SLR. Whether you are new to digital SLR photography or an experienced pro, David Busch s Nikon D300 Guide to Digital SLR Photography will help you maximize your camera s capabilities.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...
 Navigating the Menus April 22, 2008
Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA)
165 out of 197 found this review helpful
I've been shooting Nikon cameras since 1960. When I look at the collection of buttons, dials, switches, screens and menus on Nikon's D300 digital SLR, I wonder if I would have become a photographer back then if faced with so many choices.
All these choices are good. They let you customize the D300 to be used exactly the way you would want. And the embarrassment of riches means that one camera can do many things, for many different photographers, so that ultimately a highly sophisticated machine can be delivered more cheaply to photographers whose styles vary markedly.
Some of the choices seem really important. Do you want to set up focus so that you are better able to capture a sitting portrait subject or a flying bird? Other choices seem more trivial. Would you rather review the last image you captured by pressing on the left side or the top of a multi-selector switch?
To deal with all these choices, Nikon provides a manual of several hundred pages that explains the options that are offered with some very small, sketchy illustrations, but without explanation of which options might be better for a particular type of photographer.
David Busch set out to bring a little more clarity to the bewildering field of choices, and does a relatively good job of it. Unfortunately, that means going through each menu and selection step by step. The illustrations are larger than the manual and in color, and Busch actually makes recommendations about items to select. For example the D300 allows you to elect to have either 51 or 11 focus points available (which is different then selecting a focus point, once you've made the choice). My first instinct after reading the manual was to ask why everyone wouldn't select the maximum number of focus points, but the author pointed out that 11 points is faster for selecting a focus point for large subject matter, like photographing some sports.
After going through all of the options, Busch returns to several key subjects that usually require the integration of several choices, like getting the right exposure or the best focusing for particular kinds of photography. There's a chapter on lenses that experienced photographers can skip, but that any beginner bold enough to purchase a D300 for his first digital single lens reflex will find useful. The chapter on lighting contained a good explanation of Nikon's Creative Lighting System that allows for an integration of electronic flash in a more useful way then ever before. I only wish Busch had been able to convey the joy of being able to dance around the subject without any kind of tether while your flashes responded. It's easy to feel like David Hemmings with Veruschka in "Blow Up", without all that hot continuous lighting.
The book finishes up with a quick glance at the software available for post processing, which, other than listing the names of software, really didn't provide much help in making a choice, and then covers some maintenance issues like updating firmware and cleaning the camera's sensor.
By its nature this is not an exciting book, since the author eschews any effort at telling us about the artistry possible with the camera, but that's the nature of manuals. One should also note that occasionally Busch falls from grace in small ways, as when he suggests that the D300 can control up to four groups of lights in CLS, when what he probably means to say is that you can transmit your signals on four separate channels, or that four groups can be controlled if you use an external flash. These errors are small and quickly identifiable to anyone trying to use the menus. On the other hand there are a few subjects on which I would have liked to see more material, like AF Fine Tune, where a discussion of the use of targets to select the tuning would have been useful. And I was sorry the chapter on lenses didn't mention the use of focal length to control perspective, especially since there was a set of full page illustrations that showed this so well.
All in all, this is an excellent introduction to the options that are available to photographers with the D300. Although early adopters may already have figured out most of the possibilities, there is probably still something for an experienced user to learn, and, if you've just picked up a D300, this is lot easier to use then the Nikon manual.
Excellent D300 Guide. Probably His Best Book Yet April 28, 2008
Arizona Photographer (Grand Canyon)
90 out of 119 found this review helpful
I received my D300 in December 2007 and as of the end of April 2008, I've shot 15,600 photos. This book is the perect guide for any D300 owner. Some of the menu options are different from D200 or D80 and the author does a very good job explaining what is different and why.
The book covers all the camera features and gives you ideas about how to best use the features. The book is over 400 pages and larger in size than previous guides of this type. It makes it easier to read. The book is full of color examples.
There is a great section on lenses, flashes. advanced shooting tips, etc.
The manual that comes with the camera is okay to a point, but it has no dicussion. David's book dicusses why you should do something a certain way rather than just listing the options and letting you figure it out.
I learned a lot and will keep reading it to learn everything I can to improve my photography.
Advanced camera serves this in-depth coverage April 22, 2008
Terrence (Solon)
85 out of 105 found this review helpful
I purchased my Nikon D300 in December and at that time bought the Nikon D200 Digital Field Guide because nothing else was available for my camera. I went with the same author, David Busch, for my first D300 book, and I am glad I did! As good as the D200 Digital Field Guide was, the approach taken in this book is much, much better.
Compared to the Digital Field Guides, this book has much more depth and a lot more information on how to use the camera. It's a 450-page full size book with roughly twice the content of a Digital Field Guide, and it features large color illustrations rather than postage stamp sized pictures. To give you the idea of the depth of coverage, this book devotes 117 pages just to menus and setup options, with exhaustive descriptions of how each menu entry works, and why you'd want to select a particular setting. And that doesn't even count a half dozen pages in a later chapter with tables that provide recommended Shooting Menu Bank and Custom Setting Menu Bank settings for particular types of photography.
I particularly enjoyed the 40 pages devoted to lenses, including reviews of all the key lenses available for my Nikon D300. There are another 40 pages on working with light and using the confusing Nikon Creative Lighting System.
Is there anything left out? This time, Busch does not devote a third of the pages to checklist recipes for common shooting situations, as he did with his D200 Digital Field Guide. I think that the owner of a camera this advanced probably doesn't need a couple pages of summaries on how to take photos of seascapes or sunsets. I'd rather have the solid information in this book, which equipped me to go out and take any kind of picture I want to.
Best book on the D300 May 31, 2008
David J. Schneider (Houston, TX USA)
53 out of 75 found this review helpful
By far the best book on the Nikon D300. Whereas most competing books do a quick overview of the options and then launch into generic how to take pictures advice (which is likely too simplistic and therefore not useful to someone who shells out major bucks for the D300), Busch's book concentrates almost exclusively on the various (and seemingly infinite) options for the D300. The book is clear and absolutely essential for those who have bought (or want to buy) a D300. I actually bought the book before buying the camera, and reading it convinced me to buy. The documentation that comes with the camera is clear but doesn't help decide when the various options might be useful. Most of the other books on the D300 are not much of an improvement in that regard. Busch's book is. Also the Busch book is extremely helpful on various accessories; the Nikon site is useless in deciding which of various versions of some accessories are important to buy. Several minor errors, a result of rush to publication, but not troublesome.
 Ripped Off! Not a Nikon D300 book. May 15, 2008
Alexa Pierce (Dallas, TX)
52 out of 165 found this review helpful
I bought this book because I got a Nikon D300 and I knew I would need more than just the manual that comes with the camera.
My friend is a Canon fan and owns the Canon 40D, but I always heard Nikon is a better camera, and I bought the Nikon D300. Why tell you this?
Because when I was debating what camera to buy I read my friends Canon 40D book by this same author. So when I was looking for a book, I saw that David Bush wrote this book, and bought it.
While reading the book I felt I had already read this book. I started coming across information I had already read. I went to the local book store to compare since I didn't have the copy of the Canon book anymore.
Surprise! Not only did I find one book by Mr. Bush with the same information but two (one Nikon and one Canon). Not only does this author reuse the same text throughout the book, but the same pictures are used throughout (Some are not exactly the same but you can tell they were shot in the same time frame). Some image look old and they might not even be digital.
I feel ripped off! I would expect the author would use images shot with the camera. The author is taking a general photography books, adding a few menus from the specific camera, and passing himself off as an expert on the Nikon. Or is he a Canon expert? I can't tell.
This author should be ashamed selling the same book with different covers. Refund!
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