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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16235 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 219 pages

About the Author
Darrell Young (DigitalDarrell) is an information technology engineer by trade and has been an avid photographer for over 35 years. He has a rather large family, with his wife and five children, so he has a constantly interesting flow of photographic opportunities. In fact, his entire family uses Nikon cameras to pursue what has become a cohesive family hobby.

Darrell delights in using Nikon's newest digital cameras but if pressed, he will admit to being a "closet" film user too. Living next to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has given him a real concern for, and interest in, nature photography. Darrell loves to write, as you can see in the Resources area of the Nikonians.org community. He joined the community in the year 2000, and his literary contributions led to his invitation to become a Founding Member of the Nikonians Writers Guild.

Customer Reviews

If only!
It is fair to say I did achieve a few notable successes with my various Nikon F series cameras and, I swear, one of these days, either I am going frame my favourite combination of camera and underwater housing or find a suitable display cabinet by way of saying thank you to a range of products which served me well. Apart from illustrating my own articles and books, one of my photos of a Killer Whale taken with an already ancient F2 fitted inside an equally dated manually operated aluminium housing, went on to grace the cover of a National Geographic video. Loyalty demands I could never part with that equipment.

Photographic technology, however, has moved on and I must confess to finding the conversion to digital a very steep learning curve. But I say this in order to be helpful. Having purchased a great deal of new equipment in readiness for an extensive series of trips designed to take me to the world's greatest diveable shipwrecks, I spared no expense in attending all manner of courses and also purchased the latest books, CDs and DVDs in an attempt to pick up where I left off. Sadly, not all those products were worthy of the purchase price - in some cases, not even the postage cost. Furthermore, finding some of those inferior products given "5 Star reviews" by people who appear to be unable to give any item a lower rating is really confusing.

I came to this book, however, because I was instantly caught by the title to which my immediate, albeit silent, mental response was to say to myself "I wish." Yes, I wish I had mastered the Nikon D300 - but I am getting there! And the reason why I am getting there is because this is an easy-to-read, no nonsense book which tells me what I want to know.

If you are new to photography and the Nikon D300 is your very first camera, you will need to learn a few basic lessons such as, for example, the correlation between film speeds, shutter speeds and aperture settings - which really do need to be understood. But don't let that put you off because that won't take long at all. So having spent very little time on that problem, this book then becomes about as good as they get by teaching you all about the D300 and will serve the skilled photographer equally as well as the novice.

The book is laid out in a simple and straightforward manner and is of the right size to be taken wherever you go. Allowing the reader to build on each lesson as they progress, author Darrell Young provides a learning process which is easy-to-understand, easy to follow and, at the same time most thorough.

All the headings are there and within each of these the subject matter is expanded and broken down into the relevant component parts. The graphics are excellent and show the features exactly as they are found on the camera. All the reader has to do is pick up a camera and start at page 1. By the time you get to page 211, you will have gone a long way to "Mastering the Nikon D300.

Altogether a very proficient work.

NM

Superb Book
Quite the best book on the D300 (indeed all of other Nikon camera books) that has come my way. Clearly written, largely jargon free, and no showboating by the author. Pat Hunt, Ireland

The Best D300 Book
"Mastering the Nikon D300" is by far and away the best book I have read on the D300 to date; it's a really enjoyable read and very informative.

I also own the "Nikon D300 Digital Field Guide" (Wiley) book - this is ok, but there is such a massive mistake just a few pages in (the photo showing the metering mode selector is wrongly labelled on page 7 which wasted so much of my time - center weighted and 3D Colour Matrix are shown back to front!) that this just put me off from the start. I've also flicked through another D300 guide for a few minutes and found several typos, so I didn't buy that one.

Darrell Young's book is the first one that has given me the confidence to customise the D300 and I now feel I really know my way around - I've set up custom menus for different shooting situations and this has proved really useful already.

I'm really looking forward to other books from Nikonians Press and this one comes highly recommended.