Here I go again, inventing another niche. When digital photography began its meteoric rise in
popularity and publishers were foisting dozens of “digital camera” books on the public, I insisted on writing about digital photography. Then, a host of digital photo books appeared that concentrated on how to get the effects you wanted in Photoshop, when I thought it was a better idea to show you how to get great pictures in your camera. More recently, I’ve been among the first to address the needs of
the latest converts to digital photography: those who have found digital SLRs to be their dream camera.
While there is a growing number of books devoted to dSLRs (and I’ve been blamed for more than a Introduction few of them), I see another niche opening up. There are many photographers who are new to SLRs or new to digital SLRs and are overwhelmed by their options while underwhelmed by the explanations they receive in their user’s manuals. These manuals are great if you already know
what you don’t know, and can find an answer somewhere in a booklet arranged by menu listings
and written by a camera vendor employee who last threw together a manual for a VCR. While there are a few third-party basic dSLR function-oriented how to books that purport to teach you how to use your camera for a few bucks, they generally deal with certain very popular models.
If you own an older dSLR or a less popular model, you’re often out of luck. Anyone who acquires
a used Nikon D100, any of various older Kodak digital SLRs, or models from Olympus, Panasonic, Sigma, and Fuji, the pickings are slim. This book doesn’t show you exactly how to make settings with a digital SLR camera: It tells you why you want to make them. You’ll learn how to apply various controls, understand where you might find them on your particular camera, and pick up the
knowledge you need to visit your camera’s manual (if necessary) to locate the exact menu where a
setting that does what you want is hidden. No free fish in this book; my goal is to teach you
how to fish.
The book is arranged in a browseable layout, so you can thumb through and find the exact information you need quickly. The basics are presented within twopage and four-page spreads, so
all the explanations and the illustrations that illuminate them are there for easy viewing. This book
should solve many of your problems with a minimum amount of fuss and frustration.
Then, when you’re ready to learn more, I hope you pick up one of my five in-depth guides to digital
SLR photography. Three of them are offered by Thomson Course Technology, each approaching
the topic from a different perspective.
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