David Busch's Nikon D700: Guide to Digital SLR Photography [ペーパーバック]

I'm always amazed at how Busch keeps raising the bar for camera guide books. If you own a camera as sophisticated as the Nikon D700, you shouldn't settle for anything less than this in-depth look at every feature of Nikon's most affordable full frame model. Combining the technical insights of Thom Hogan with the friendly, accessible style of Scott Kelby, Busch explains the camera from every level, satisfying the curiousity of both newcomers and old hands. The treatment is exactly right for this camera: other guides seem to treat the D700 as if it were a Nikon D90 that is heavier. Busch always ups his game as the camera grows in features and complexity.

With this book, the author divides his coverage of the D700 into two parts. The first section is 219 pages long, with roughly the same amount of content as the smaller, pocket-sized guides, but with more detail and guidance. The first chapter is a quick start of all the basic features of the D700, plus some recommendations for default settings changes that you should make right away. The second chapter is a 50-page examination of each and every control, button, and dial of the D700, showing how and when to use them. The next three chapters amount to 126 pages, and pore over every menu entry and option, explaining in detail what happens when you select each one, and detailing why you'd want to use these settings. This first section of the book is an introduction that every D700 owner -- newbie or pro -- needs to read.

But that's just the beginning. Busch continues where the other guides leave off, with individual chapters on understanding exposure, mastering the D700's complex autofocus options, and working with Live View and other advanced techniques. He devotes 48 pages to an exhaustive examination of Nikon's extensive line of lenses, based on his personal experience with all of them. Other chapters talk about techniques for using light and electronic flash with the D700, choosing software, and troubleshooting your camera. This book is more than a replacement for Nikon's manual: it's a photo course on using the D700 to take better pictures.

The world's #1 selling digital camera guide author is back, with a 558-page comprehensive book about Nikon's popular D700 full frame digital SLR. As we've said before in reviewing this author's breakthrough guidebooks, Busch avoids the typical manual rehash found in other guides to deliver 12 thick chapters of the most thorough treatment of this camera available. It's an age when "expanded guides" are actually shorter than the book packed with the camera, "field guides" concentrate on generalities rather than specifics, and books that help "dummies" as they "master" their cameras don't actually do that. What we really need are books like Busch's, which not only explain what the buttons and controls do, but why you should use each setting an option, as well as relating each feature to the rest of the lore that makes up digital photography.

As always, Busch recognizes that each camera is unique, and although the explanations of basic concepts like exposure, shutter speeds, and apertures are similar across all models in all his books, the Nikon D700 is given its own detailed coverage. In this book, he manages to do that while tailoring his explanations to this camera and its users, from beginners through intermediate photographers and advanced shooters who want a fast way to learn the camera and gain some tips. You can't do that with a cookie-cutter book.

David Busch's Nikon D700 Guide to Digital SLR Photography is well-organized so that any photographer of any level can quickly locate what they need to know. For example, there's a "Getting Started" chapter, which, the author acknowledges, will likely be read only after the reader has already taken a few hundred photos. It provides the kind of pre-flight checklist you wish you had when you bought your first digital SLR. Next comes a "roadmap" chapter that carefully explains each of the controls on the camera, with many photos and the right amount of detail. The thick, but small-format book that comes with the D700 has many cross-references that send you darting around. Busch gives you the nitty gritty here.

As with his previous D300s book, there are three chapters on shooting and setup options, one each on the Playback/Shooting menus, Custom menu, and Setup/Retouching/My Menu options. You don't have to absorb all the reference material here right away. You can skim through Chapters 1 and 2, continue with the elements of Nikon D700 photography in Chapters 6-12, and come back to the menus/settings chapters as you need them. We especially liked the chapter that explains the mysteries of the Nikon MultiCAM 3500FX autofocus system, and absolutely doted on the later chapters that explained GPS, Live View, and Busch's personal take on virtually every Nikon lens currently in the line. The other guidebooks simply don't have room for this kind of depth.

If you've been waiting for this book from the top Nikon expert, pounce on it. If you already own a book about your D700, you need this one, to see what you've been missing.

Busch knows what he's talking about! I purchased my D700 six months ago and have been struggling to learn all its features. The manual furnished with the camera is complete, but makes it almost impossible to find anything quickly. It has you jumping around from section to section to learn even simple functions. Then, I found this book, which is 1000 times better. The author gives you the basic information you need to use the camera in the first few chapters, and then refers you to later chapters for more detailed explanations. This is perfect for me. I don't get bogged down with technical details right off the bat, but I can jump ahead to a later chapter to read as much as I want. Autofocus has always mystified me, but I learned the options in the first part of the book, and then learned exactly how autofocus works in an entire chapter devoted just to that topic.

I am very visually oriented and find that I learn from books like this one, which have a great many large color illustrations much better than from other guides, which are laden with text and have only small pictures. This book should have been packaged with the camera. Are you listening, Nikon? If buyers like me can learn how to use their cameras more quickly with a well organized book like this one, we will be more likely to stick with your system!