randomosity

 Wow! This is the manual that should come with the cam­era. If you, like me, come away from the stock manual dis­ap­poin­ted, frus­trated, or just feel­ing that it simply leaves out all the prac­tical ‘why’ type information…get this book. Com­ing on the heels of Young’s pre­vi­ous Mas­ter­ing a vari­ety of other Nikon DSLR’s this latest iter­a­tion is simply superb. Mas­ter­ing the Nikon D7000 by Dar­rell Young goes deep on every single fea­ture, switch, dial, bell, whistle and pos­sib­il­ity that this cam­era offers the novice or advanced digital photographer.

One of the great strengths of this manual is the inclu­sion of the per­sonal recom­mend­a­tions by the author at the end of each sec­tion. The author has a pas­sion for digital cam­era craft and it comes through in his deliv­ery of hints and tips. Each concept or func­tion is dealt with from a sum­mary, addi­tional detail, full dis­cus­sion method and this allows the use of the volume as quick ref­er­ence, or for more full ref­er­ence and con­sid­er­a­tion. One allows the volume to be accessed quickly and the other to use it more as a cus­tom guided tutorial in learn­ing how to use the cam­era. Nice.

Cov­er­age of the fea­tures is very extens­ive. Thor­ough really doesn’t describe it because much is based on really going bey­ond and con­sid­er­ing how the cam­era func­tions in real world use. Case in point, there are mul­tiple card slots in the D7000 and Young makes the point of remind­ing the user that this func­tion may apply to either card and be care­ful to know which you are address­ing. That is typ­ical of the above and bey­ond demon­strated in this book. The dis­cus­sion ‘bubbles’ that are dot­ted through­out the volume extend the tutori­als even fur­ther deal­ing in greater depth with real world applic­a­tion and usage and offer valu­able tips on other soft­ware or pieces of hard­ware that can aug­ment the D7000 exper­i­ence. ‘Chim­per’ — bril­liant ! p.37.

The author’s per­sonal exper­i­ence really abounds through­out the very read­able dis­cus­sion. Although it is in many ways a walk through of fea­tures, the pas­sion (as men­tioned before) is really evid­ent and makes this a superbly read­able piece of work. It is well illus­trated, but really bright and bub­bly — and I mean that in the most pos­it­ive way — it really makes you want to read through — a real chal­lenge when you are attempt­ing to work with as much tech­nical com­plex­ity that is con­veyed. This book is the miss­ing manual for this cam­era and ulti­mately a recom­men­ded read for both novice and advanced pho­to­grapher alike. It is an excel­lent value to really help you get the value out of the cam­era itself and to drive you to really start to embrace the cre­at­ive poten­tial of the cam­era. Excel­lent!