Nikon. The name has been associated with top-flight photography equipment for generations. And the introduction of the D5500 has only enriched Nikon’s well-deserved reputation, offering all the control that a diehard photography enthusiast could want while providing easy-to-use, point-and-shoot features for the beginner.

In fact, the D5500 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 about 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.

Therein lies the point of Nikon D5500 For Dummies. Throughout 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.

Here's a brief preview of what you can find in each part of the book:

• Part I: Fast Track to Super Snaps: Part I contains two chapters to help you get up and running. Chapter 1 guides you through initial camera setup, shows you how to view and adjust camera settings, and walks you through the steps of taking your first pictures using the Auto exposure mode. Chapter 2 introduces you to other exposure modes and also explains basic picture options such as Flash mode, Shutter Release mode, Image Size (resolution), and Image Quality (JPEG or Raw).
• Part II: Taking Creative Control: Chapters in this part help you unleash the full creative power of your camera by detailing the advanced shooting modes (P, S, A, and M). Chapter 3 covers the critical topic of exposure; Chapter 4 explains how to manipulate focus; and Chapter 5 discusses color controls. Chapter 6 summarizes techniques explained in earlier chapters, providing a quick-reference guide to the camera settings and shooting strategies that produce the best results for portraits, action shots, landscape scenes, and close-ups. Chapter 7 shifts gears, moving from still photography to HD movie recording with your D5500.
• Part III: After the Shot: This part offers two chapters, both dedicated to tasks you do after you press the shutter button. Chapter 8 explains how to review your pictures on the camera monitor and connect your camera to a TV for large-screen playback. Chapter 9 topics include rating, deleting, and protecting photos, downloading images to your computer or to a tablet or smartphone, processing Raw files, and preparing pictures for online sharing.
• 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 details options for customizing your camera, including changing the function of some buttons and entering a copyright notice that your camera can add to your picture files. Chapter 11 covers the photo-editing and effects tools found on the camera's Retouch menu and also shows you how to use the Effects exposure mode to add special effects to movies and photos as you record them. At the end of the chapter, I show you how to create a slide show featuring your best work.

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:

The 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 another pressing fact.

Additionally, I need to point out these extra details that will help you use this book effectively:

• 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.

Beyond the Book

If you have Internet access, you can find a bit of extra content online, including this book's Cheat Sheet.

• The Cheat Sheet found at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/nikond5500 contains a quick-reference guide to all the buttons, dials, switches, and exposure modes on your camera. 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.
• In addition, find a few articles at www.dummies.com/extras/nikon offering additional advice about your camera and photography in general. For example, you can find an article about the seven Picture Control settings that come with your camera.

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 mind-boggling at first. So take it slowly, experimenting with just one or two new camera settings or techniques at first. Then, every 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 D5500 is the perfect partner for your photographic journey, and I thank you for allowing me, through this book, to serve as your tour guide.

Part 1

Fast Track to Super Snaps

Visit www.dummies.com for more great For Dummies content online.

Preparing the Camera for Initial Use

After unpacking your camera, you have to assemble a few parts. In addition to the camera body and the supplied battery (be sure to charge it before the first use), you need a lens and a memory card. Later sections in this chapter provide details about working with lenses and memory cards, but here's what you need to know up front:

• Lens: You can mount a wide range of lenses on your D5500, but some aren't compatible with all camera features. For example, to enjoy autofocusing, you need an AF-S or AF-I lens. (The 18–55mm and 18–140mm lenses available as a kit with the D5500 body are both AF-S lenses.) Your camera manual offers details about lens compatibility.

  The AF in AF-S stands for autofocus, and the S stands for silent wave, a Nikon autofocus technology. AF-I lenses are older, professional-grade (expensive) lenses that are no longer made but may be available on the secondhand market.

• SD (Secure Digital) memory card: Your camera accepts only this type of card. Most SD cards carry the designation SDHC (for High Capacity) or SDXC (for eXtended Capacity), depending on how many gigabytes (GB) of data they hold. SDHC cards hold from 4GB to 32GB of data; the SDXC moniker is assigned to cards with capacities greater than 32GB.

With camera, lens, battery, and card within reach, take these steps:

1. Turn the camera off.
2. Install the battery into the compartment on the bottom of the camera.

3. Attach a lens.

   First, remove the caps that cover the front of the camera and the back of the lens. Then align the mounting index (white dot) on the lens with the one on the camera body, as shown in Figure 1-1. After placing the lens on the camera mount, rotate the lens toward the shutter-button side of the camera. You should feel a solid click as the lens locks into place.

4. Insert a memory card.

   Open the card-slot cover on the right side of the camera and orient the card as shown in Figure 1-2 (the label faces the back of the camera). Push the card gently into the slot and close the cover. The memory-card access light, labeled in the figure, illuminates briefly to let you know that the camera recognizes the card.

5. Rotate the monitor to the desired viewing position.

   When you first take the camera out of its box, the monitor is positioned with the screen facing inward, protecting it from scratches and smudges. Gently lift the right side of the monitor up and away from the camera back. You can then rotate the monitor to move it into the traditional position on the camera back, as shown on the left in Figure 1-3, or swing the monitor out to get a different viewing angle, as shown on the right.

6. Turn the camera on.

7. Set the language, time zone, and date.

   When you power up the camera for the first time, you can't do anything until you respond to onscreen prompts asking you to select your language, time zone, date, and time. The date/time information is included as metadata (hidden data) in the picture file. You can view metadata in some playback display modes (see Chapter 8) and in certain photo programs, including Nikon ViewNX 2. (Refer to Chapter 9.)

   The easiest way to adjust the settings is to use the touchscreen: Just tap an option to select it. On the final screen (date/time), tap OK to finalize your choices. You also can do things the old-fashioned way, using the Multi Selector and OK button, both labeled in Figure 1-3. Press the edge of the Multi Selector up and down to scroll the highlight cursor vertically; press right/left to travel horizontally. Again, press OK after making your selections on a screen.

   (You can find more details about using the touchscreen and adjusting camera settings later in this chapter.)

8. Adjust the viewfinder to your eyesight.

   This step is critical; if you don't set the viewfinder to your eyesight, subjects that appear out of focus in the viewfinder might actually be in focus, and vice versa. If you wear glasses while shooting, adjust the viewfinder with your glasses on — and don't forget to reset the viewfinder focus if you take off your glasses or your prescription changes.

   You control viewfinder focus through the adjustment dial labeled in Figure 1-4. (In official lingo, it's called the diopter adjustment dial.) After taking off the lens cap and making sure that the camera is turned on, look through the viewfinder and press the shutter button halfway. In dim lighting, the flash may pop up. Ignore it for now and concentrate on the row of data that appears at the bottom of the viewfinder screen. Rotate the dial until that data appears sharpest. The markings in the center of the viewfinder, which relate to autofocusing, also become more or less sharp. Ignore the scene you see through the lens; that won't change because you're not actually focusing the camera. When you finish, press down on the flash unit to close it if necessary.

9. If using a retractable lens, unlock and extend the lens.

   The 18–55mm kit lens sold with the D5500 (and featured in this book) is a retractable lens, sometimes called a pancake lens. The beauty of this type of lens is that when you're not shooting, you can retract the lens barrel so that the camera takes up less space in your camera bag. However, before you can take a picture, you must unlock and extend the lens. Figure 1-5 shows the lens in its retracted (left image) and extended (right image) positions.

   To extend the lens, press the lens lock button, highlighted in Figure 1-5, while rotating the lens barrel toward the shutter button side of the camera. To retract the lens, press the button while rotating the lens in the other direction.

That's all there is to it — the camera is now ready to go. From here, my recommendation is that you keep reading this chapter to familiarize yourself with the main camera features and basic operation. But if you're anxious to take a picture right away, I won't think any less of you if you skip to the very last section of the chapter, which guides you through the process. Just promise that at some point, you'll read the pages in between, because they actually do contain important information.

Checking Out External Controls

Scattered across your camera's exterior are numerous features that you use to change picture-taking settings, review your photos, and perform various other operations. In later chapters, I discuss all your camera's functions in detail and provide the exact steps to follow to access them. This section provides just a basic “what's this thing do?” guide to each control. (Don't worry about memorizing the button names; throughout the book, I show pictures of buttons in the page margins to help you know exactly which one to press.)

Keep in mind, too, that you can adjust many settings by simply tapping the touchscreen, which is sometimes faster and easier than fiddling with the camera buttons. I provide an introduction to using the touchscreen later in this chapter.

Enabling and Using the Touchscreen

When manufacturers first started putting touchscreens on dSLRs, I thought, “Meh, just a gimmick.” But after discovering how much easier it is to adjust camera settings by using the touchscreen instead of pressing buttons and rotating dials — well, let's just say that I was wrong in my initial assessment. Yes, I said it: “I was wrong.”

If you've used a smartphone, tablet, or other touchscreen device, working with the camera's touchscreen will feel familiar. Just as with those devices, you communicate with the camera via these gestures, which are specific ways to touch the screen:

• Tap: Tap a finger lightly on the screen. When navigating menus like the ones shown in Figure 1-10, for example, tap a menu icon (labeled on the left in the figure) to display that menu and then tap a menu item to select it and display available options for that item.
• Drag (or swipe): Drag your finger up, down, right, or left across the screen. For example, in a menu like the one shown on the left in Figure 1-10, dragging your finger up and down the screen scrolls the display through the pages of the menu.
• Flick: Drag a finger quickly across the screen. You use this gesture during playback, flicking left or right to quickly scroll from one photo to the next.
• Pinch in/pinch out: Pinching enables you to quickly adjust the magnification of an image during picture playback. To magnify the image, pinch out. That is, place your thumb and your pointer finger in the center of the screen and then drag both fingers outward to the edges of the screen. To zoom out, pinch in, dragging your thumb and finger from the outer edge of the screen toward the center.

By default, the touchscreen is enabled for both shooting and playback. But you can disable it entirely or use it just for playback if you wish. The following steps walk you through the process of adjusting this option and give you some practice in using the touchscreen:

1. Press the Menu button to display the menus.

   Sadly, there's no touchscreen control that takes you to the menus.

2. Tap the Setup menu icon (wrench symbol) to select that menu, as shown on the left in Figure 1-10.

3. Tap the Touch Controls option, highlighted in the figure.

   You see the screen shown on the right in Figure 1-10.

4. To turn the touchscreen off for shooting functions but leave it enabled for playback, tap Playback Only. To disable the touchscreen altogether, tap Disable.

   On many screens, a return arrow icon appears in the top-right corner of the screen (refer to Figure 1-10). Tap this icon to exit the screen without making any changes to the current setting.

Keep in mind that if you choose Playback Only or Disable, you can't use the touchscreen to revert to the original, Enable, setting. Instead, you must use the Multi Selector and OK button to do the job. (See the next section for help navigating menus using these controls.)

A couple final tips about the touchscreen:

• The Information screen tells you the touchscreen status. To display this screen, available during regular, viewfinder photography, press the Info button or press the shutter button halfway and release it. At the top of the screen, the icon labeled in Figure 1-11 indicates that touchscreen is turned on for both playback and shooting. The symbol disappears if you change the Touch Controls setting to Playback Only or Disable.
• On the Information and Live View displays, a white border around a symbol indicates that you can tap that symbol to access the setting. For example, the border around the i symbol in the lower-right corner of the Information display (refer to Figure 1-11) tells you that you can tap that area to perform the same action as pressing the i button.

• When looking through the viewfinder, you can tap your thumb anywhere on the right half of the screen to perform a specific function. Nikon refers to this feature as the Touch Function (thus the letters FN next to the touchscreen-enabled symbol). Try it: With your eye to the viewfinder, tap your right thumb on the right half of the screen. By default, your tap displays a grid in the viewfinder; tap again to hide the grid. Don't need a grid? Use the Assign Touch Fn option on the Custom Setting menu to make the camera perform a different task when you tap. Chapter 10 has details.

  If you swing the monitor out to the left side of the camera, you can tap anywhere on the monitor to take advantage of the Touch Function. You still must have your eye to the viewfinder to make this feature work, however. It's not available for Live View photography or movie shooting.

• During Live View shooting, you can tap the screen to set focus and take a picture. You also can tell the camera to set focus only when you tap. The last section of this chapter tells you more about this feature, known as the Touch Shutter.
• Don't apply a screen protector. Applying a screen protector can actually damage the monitor and make it less responsive to your touch.

Navigating Menus

Although you can change some settings by using the camera's external buttons or by tapping touchscreen symbols, other options are accessible only via the menus. To access the menus, press the Menu button. You see a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 1-12. The icons along the left side of the screen represent the available menus. To the right of the icon strip are options associated with the current menu. Table 1-1 offers a quick guide to the menus.

Here's what you need to know to work your way though menu screens:

• To select a different menu: Tap the menu's icon or press the Multi Selector up or down to highlight an icon. (If a menu option is currently highlighted on the right side of the screen, as in Figure 1-12, first press the Multi Selector left to activate the icon strip.)

• To select and adjust a menu option: Again, you can take advantage of the touchscreen or use the Multi Selector:

  • Touchscreen: If you see a scroll bar on the right side of the window as in Figure 1-12, swipe up or down to scroll to the next page of menu options. Tap the option you want to adjust. Settings available for the selected item then appear. Tap the setting you want to use. Or, to exit without making any changes, tap the return arrow in the upper-right corner of the screen.
  • Multi Selector/OK button: First, press the Multi Selector right to jump from the menu-icon column to the list of menu items. Then press up or down to scroll the menu until the option you want to change is highlighted. Press OK to display the available settings. Repeat the old up-and-down scroll routine until the choice you prefer is highlighted. Then press OK.

  In some cases, a right-pointing triangle appears next to a menu item. That's your cue to tap that item or to press the Multi Selector right to display a submenu.

  Items that are dimmed in a menu aren't available in the current exposure mode. For access to all settings, set the Mode dial to P, S, A, or M.

• To select items from the Custom Setting menu: Displaying the Custom Setting menu, represented by the Pencil icon, takes you to a screen that contains six submenus that carry the labels A through F, as shown in Figure 1-13. Each submenu holds clusters of options related to a specific aspect of the camera's operation. To get to those options, tap the submenu name or highlight it with the Multi Selector and press OK.

  In the Nikon manual, instructions reference the Custom Setting menu items by a menu letter and number. For example, “Custom Setting a1” refers to the first option on the a (Autofocus) submenu. I try to be more specific, however, so I use the actual setting names. (Really, we all have enough numbers to remember, don't you think?)

  After you jump to the first submenu, you can simply scroll up and down the list to view options from other submenus. You don't have to keep going back to the initial menu screen and selecting a submenu.

• Create a custom menu or view your 20 most recently adjusted menu items: The sixth menu is actually two menus that share an apartment: Recent Settings and My Menu, both shown in Figure 1-14. Each menu contains a Choose Tab option as the last item on the menu; select this option to shift between the two menus.

  Here's what the two menus offer:

  • Recent Settings: This screen lists the 20 menu items you ordered most recently. To adjust those settings, you don't have to wade through all the other menus to look for them — head to the Recent Settings menu instead.

    To remove an item from the Recent Settings menu, use the Multi Selector to highlight the item and press Delete. Press Delete again to confirm your decision. (If you tap the item in the menu, you pull up that item's options screen and you must tap the return arrow at the top of the screen to exit back to the menu. You can then press Delete.)

  • My Menu: From this screen, you can create a custom menu that contains your favorite options. Chapter 10 details the steps.

Viewing Critical Picture Settings

Your D5500 gives you the following ways to monitor important picture-taking settings:

• Information display: The left screen in Figure 1-15 gives you a look at this display, which appears when you first turn on the camera and then disappears after a few seconds. To redisplay it, take either of these steps:

  • Press the Info button. Press once to display the screen; press again to turn off the monitor.
  • Press the shutter button halfway and release it. Pressing and holding the button halfway down turns off the screen and fires up the autofocusing and exposure metering systems. Because those two systems use battery power, you may want to avoid this technique when the battery is running low.

  If your Information screen appears different than the ones shown in this book, don't freak out: The camera actually offers six Information screen display styles. You choose your favorite via the Info Display Format option on the Setup menu; Chapter 10 has details.

• Live View display: In Live View mode, where you compose pictures using the monitor, the shooting data appears atop the live preview (refer to the right side of Figure 1-15). To switch to Live View mode, rotate the Live View switch (top of the camera, next to the Mode dial).

  You can vary the type of data displayed on the Live View screen by pressing the Info button. See the last section of this chapter for information about this issue and about Live View shooting in general.

• Viewfinder: You also can view some settings at the bottom of the viewfinder, as shown in Figure 1-16. The information that appears depends on the exposure mode.

  You can display gridlines in the viewfinder, as shown on the right in the figure. The gridlines help you ensure the alignment of objects in your photo — for example, to make sure that the horizon is level in a landscape. When your eye is up to the viewfinder and the touchscreen is enabled, tap the right half of the monitor to toggle the grid on and off. (If the monitor is swung to the side of the camera, you can tap anywhere on the screen.) This trick works only if you stick with the default Touch Function setting on the Setup menu, however. You also can hide and display the grid via the Viewfinder Grid Display option, found on the Shooting/Display section of the Custom Setting menu.

If what you see in Figures 1-15 and 1-16 looks like a confusing mess, don't worry. Many settings relate to options that won't mean anything to you until you explore the advanced exposure modes (P, S, A, and M). But make note of the following bits of data that are helpful in any exposure mode:

• Battery status indicator: A full-battery icon (refer to Figure 1-15) shows that the battery is fully charged; if the icon appears empty, look for your battery charger.

  Just for good measure, the camera also displays a low-battery symbol in the viewfinder (refer to the left image in Figure 1-16). If the symbol blinks, the camera won't take more pictures until you charge the battery.

• Shots remaining: Labeled in Figures 1-15 and 1-16KK

Also, remember that the viewfinder display, Live View screen, and Information screen automatically shut off after a specific period of inactivity to preserve battery power. See Chapter 10 for details about altering these auto-shutdown times, which you accomplish through the Auto Off Timers option, found in the Timers/AE Lock section of the Custom Setting menu. Normal is the default setting.