Newbie to DSLR photography..?

by familymwr

I just bought a Nikon d3000 and I am looking to learn all of the ins and outs of my camera, as well as photography in general.

Is there any sources you would recommend to help me learn? The camera does have a guide mode, but I don’t want to use that as a crutch.

Answer by simon
The same advice I’ve heard over and over through the years: Read the manual.
Go through the manual that came with your camera. As you go through each chapter, work the item that is life discussed on your camera. This will help familiarize you with the tools and functionality of the camera.
Of course, learning these things won’t help you if you don’t know what they do. If you don’t know what “f-stop”, “white balance” or “aperture” mean, then you need to study up.
Here is an brilliant glossary of terms from dpreview – an brilliant site:
http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/glossary/
You can also get some basics here:
http://www.photoxels.com/digital-photography-tutorials.html

Also, I would highly recommend Photosig.com. This is a fantastic critique site community that can help you with any questions you may have and help you develop your techinique. Hang out in the forums for some excellent passive learning

Excellent luck!

Answer by Bill
If you like to read, I would recommend any “David Busch’s Nikon D3000 Guide to Digital SLR Photography” or Simon Stafford’s Magic Lantern Guide to the Nikon D3000. Don’t bother with Nikon D3000 for Dummies, or any Dummies book for that matter.

Additional than that, I would just recommend getting a lot of practice with the P, A, S (or Tv on List cameras) and M modes in different shooting situations. Take a 2 or 4GB card, shoot a lot of pictures, don’t delete anything. Go home, download the pictures, look at the pictures that worked and check the settings you used. Also looked at the pictures that didn’t work and make a note of why it didn’t work.

(In Mac OS X Preview, you can click Apple-I and then on the Details tab to see the f-stop, aperture, and additional settings, plus camera make and model; this information is also available from Photoshop or Photoshop Elements).

Add your own answer in the comments!

Grace [Ciao, D300S]


Image by Kibondo
Another upgrade in the camera department, and the most expensive one so far: I’ve replaced my trusty D80 with a D300S. So far I’m pretty impressed with it; I like the feel of it, it’s got just enough weight for my tastes, the controls are alright, and the image quality is superb. Can’t wait to see what I’ll be able to do with this baby.

(BTW, if anyone’s got a user’s guide digitally in English or Norwegian, may maybe you drop me a message? The user’s guide I got was in German as I bought it abroad.)

View large for the full experience. :-]

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