Introduction
Once upon a time, making the move from a point-and-shoot digital camera to an SLR model required boatloads of cash and the willingness to cart around a bulky, heavy piece of equipment. All that changed a few years ago when Nikon introduced the D40, a digital SLR that offered a compact size and an equally compact price.
With the D3000, Nikon proves once again that you don’t have to give an arm and a leg — or strain your back and neck — to enjoy dSLR photography. This new addition to the Nikon family of dSLRs offers the same easy-to-love size and price tag that made the D40 so popular. And the two cameras share another important characteristic: Like the D40, the D3000 doesn’t skimp on power or performance, offering a great set of features to help you take your photography to the next level.
In fact, the D3000 offers so many features that sorting them all out can be more than a little confusing, especially if you’re new to digital photography, SLR photography, or both. For starters, you may not even be sure what SLR means or how it affects your picture taking, let alone have a clue as to all the other techie terms you encounter in your camera manual — resolution, aperture, white balance, and so on. And if you’re like many people, you may be so overwhelmed by all the controls on your camera that you haven’t yet ventured beyond fully automatic picture-taking mode. Which is a shame because it’s sort of like buying a Porsche 911 and never heading out for the open road.
Therein lies the point of Nikon D3000 For Dummies. Through this book, you can discover not just what each bell and whistle on your camera does, but also when, where, why, and how to put it to best use. Unlike many photography books, this one doesn’t require any previous knowledge of photography or digital imaging to make sense of things, either. In classic For Dummies style, everything is explained in easy-to-understand language, with lots of illustrations to help clear up any confusion.
In short, what you have in your hands is the paperback version of an in-depth photography workshop tailored specifically to your Nikon picture-taking powerhouse.
A Quick Look at What’s Ahead
This book is organized into four parts, each devoted to a different aspect of using your camera. Although chapters flow in a sequence that’s designed to take you from absolute beginner to experienced user, I’ve also tried to make each chapter as self-standing as possible so that you can explore the topics that interest you in any order you please.
The following sections offer brief previews of each part. If you’re eager to find details on a specific topic, the index shows you exactly where to look.
Part I: Fast Track to Super Snaps
Part I contains four chapters that help you get up and running with your D3000:
Chapter 1, “Getting the Lay of the Land,” offers a tour of the external controls on your camera, shows you how to navigate camera menus to access internal options, and walks you through initial camera setup and customization steps.
Chapter 2, “Taking Great Pictures, Automatically,” shows you how to get the best results when using the camera’s fully automatic exposure modes, including the Scene modes such as Sports mode, Portrait mode, and Landscape mode.
Chapter 3, “Controlling Picture Quality and Size,” introduces you to two camera settings that are critical whether you shoot in automatic or manual mode: the Image Size and Image Quality settings, which control resolution (pixel count), file format, file size, and picture quality.
Chapter 4, “Reviewing Your Photos” offers just what its title implies. Look here to find out how to view your photos on the camera monitor, delete unwanted images, and protect your favorites from accidental erasure.
Part II: Taking Creative Control
Chapters in this part help you unleash the full creative power of your D3000 by moving into semiautomatic or manual photography modes.
Chapter 5, “Getting Creative with Exposure and Lighting,” covers the all-important topic of exposure, starting with an explanation of three critical exposure controls: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. This chapter also discusses your camera’s advanced exposure modes (P, S, A, and M); explains exposure options such as Active D-Lighting, metering modes, and exposure compensation; and offers tips for using flash.
Chapter 6, “Manipulating Focus and Color,” provides help with controlling those aspects of your pictures. Head here for information about your camera’s many autofocusing options, for tips on how to manipulate depth of field (the zone of sharp focus in a picture), and for details about color controls such as white balance.
Chapter 7, “Putting It All Together,” summarizes all the techniques explained in earlier chapters, providing a quick-reference guide to the camera settings and shooting strategies that produce the best results for specific types of pictures: portraits, action shots, landscapes, close-ups, and more.
Part III: Working with Picture Files
This part of the book, as its title implies, discusses the often-confusing aspect of moving your pictures from camera to computer and beyond.
Chapter 8, “Downloading, Organizing, and Archiving Your Picture Files,” guides you through the process of transferring pictures from your camera memory card to your computer’s hard drive or other storage device. Look here, too, for details about using the D3000’s built-in tool for processing files that you shoot in the Nikon RAW format (NEF). Just as important, this chapter explains how to organize and safeguard your photo files.
Chapter 9, “Printing and Sharing Your Pictures,” helps you turn your digital files into “hard copies” that look as good as those you see on the camera monitor. This chapter also explains how to prepare your pictures for online sharing, create digital slide shows, and, for times when you have the neighbors over, display your pictures on a television screen.
Part IV: The Part of Tens
In famous For Dummies tradition, the book concludes with two “top ten” lists containing additional bits of information and advice.
Chapter 10, “Ten Fun and Practical Retouch Menu Features,” shows you how to fix less-than-perfect images using features found on your camera’s Retouch menu, such as automated red-eye removal. You also find out how to apply color effects and perform a few other photo-enhancement tricks.
Chapter 11, “Ten Special-Purpose Features to Explore on a Rainy Day,” presents information about some camera features that, while not found on most “Top Ten Reasons I Bought My D3000” lists, are nonetheless interesting, useful on occasion, or a bit of both.
Icons and Other Stuff to Note
If this isn’t your first For Dummies book, you may be familiar with the large, round icons that decorate its margins. If not, here’s your very own icon-decoder ring:
A Tip icon flags information that will save you time, effort, money, or some other valuable resource, including your sanity. Tips also point out techniques that help you get the best results from specific camera features.
When you see this icon, look alive. It indicates a potential danger zone that can result in much wailing and teeth-gnashing if ignored. In other words, this is stuff that you really don’t want to learn the hard way.
Lots of information in this book is of a technical nature — digital photography is a technical animal, after all. But if I present a detail that is useful mainly for impressing your technology-geek friends, I mark it with this icon.
I apply this icon either to introduce information that is especially worth storing in your brain’s long-term memory or to remind you of a fact that may have been displaced from that memory by some other pressing fact.
Additionally, I need to point out three additional details that will help you use this book:
Other margin art: Replicas of some of your camera’s buttons and onscreen symbols also appear in the margins of some paragraphs. I include these to provide a quick reminder of the appearance of the button or feature being discussed.
Software menu commands: In sections that cover software, a series of words connected by an arrow indicates commands that you choose from the program menus. For example, if a step tells you to “choose File⇒Convert Files,” click the File menu to unfurl it and then click the Convert Files command on the menu.
Camera firmware: Firmware is the internal software that controls many of your camera’s operations. The D3000 firmware consists of two parts, called A and B. At the time this book was written, both A and B were version 1.00.
Occasionally, Nikon releases firmware updates, and it’s a good idea to check out the Nikon Web site (www.nikon.com) periodically to find out whether any updates are available. (Chapter 1 tells you how to determine which firmware version your camera is running.) Firmware updates typically don’t carry major feature changes — they’re mostly used to solve technical glitches in existing features — but if you do download an update, be sure to read the accompanying description of what it accomplishes so that you can adapt my instructions as necessary.
About the Software Shown in This Book
Providing specific instructions for performing photo organizing and editing tasks requires that I feature specific software. In sections that cover file downloading, archiving, and e-mail sharing, I selected Nikon ViewNX and Nikon Transfer, both of which ship free with your camera and work on both the Windows and Mac operating systems.
Rest assured, though, that the tools used in ViewNX and Nikon Transfer work very similarly in other programs, so you should be able to easily adapt the steps to whatever software you use. (I recommend that you read your software manual for details. And of course, there are For Dummies books on all the major image editing applications, and you can use them if you find the manual a tad — ahem — boring.)
eCheat Sheet
As a little added bonus, you can find an electronic version of the famous For Dummies Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/nikond3000. The Cheat Sheet contains a quick-reference guide to all the buttons, dials, switches, and exposure modes on your D3000. Log on, print it out, and tuck it in your camera bag for times when you don’t want to carry this book with you.
Practice, Be Patient, and Have Fun!
To wrap up this preamble, I want to stress that if you initially think that digital photography is too confusing or too technical for you, you’re in very good company. Everyone finds this stuff a little mind-boggling at first. So take it slowly, experimenting with just one or two new camera settings or techniques at first. Then, each time you go on a photo outing, make it a point to add one or two more shooting skills to your repertoire.
I know that it’s hard to believe when you’re just starting out, but it really won’t be long before everything starts to come together. With some time, patience, and practice, you’ll soon wield your camera like a pro, dialing in the necessary settings to capture your creative vision almost instinctively.
So without further ado, I invite you to grab your camera, a cup of whatever it is you prefer to sip while you read, and start exploring the rest of this book. Your D3000 is the perfect partner for your photographic journey, and I thank you for allowing me, through this book, to serve as your tour guide.
