Mastering the Nikon D300: The Rocky Nook Manual [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

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.

"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.

This book does a good job of explaining how to use the controls of the Nikon D300. The section on use of Nikon electronic flash is especially stellar, and the illustrations are all very good, within the limitations of the small page size. I wish there was that much detail in the rest of the book, which has tiny print that I found difficult to read.

As Conrad Obregon noted in his review, the most comprehensive of the four guidebooks for the D300 is David Busch's Nikon D300 Guide to Digital SLR Photography. Its 450 pages long. The Busch book also shows you how to use the controls, with about 120 pages devoted just to the menus and why you would want to choose each particular option. But it has much more, including a 12 page section that offers recommended settings for each of the four Shooting Banks and Custom Setting Banks, for various different types of shooting situations, such as Landscapes, Portraits, etc. None of the other books have that. Large chapters deal with exposure, advanced shooting techniques, and there is one just on lenses, with evaluations of all the main Nikon lenses. This is the best and most complete Nikon D300 guide available.

I didn't like either of the other two books that are available as much as the Busch and Young books. If you don't want a comprehensive book on using the Nikon D300, the Magic Lantern D300 Guide is an acceptable choice, although it is another one of those pocket sized books and contains only black and white photos. I was surprised to see that the Nikon D300 Digital Field Guide is more of a general photography book with only a small proportion of information applying directly to the D300 itself. Most of the book is padded with simplified formulas for shooting very general photo categories, such as Landscapes or Portraits, and the example photos were mostly taken with non Nikon lenses.

Mastering the Nikon D300 would be my choice for a portable book with key information, and the David Busch book would be my choice for a printed book with complete coverage of the D300. For sheer technical detail, though, Thom Hogan's e-book is even more complete. You might even need all three of these.