David Busch Guides?

My refurb D7100 is in transit and am super excited. After my experience with a defective D7000 and my abortive attempts to buy from private parties, the "everything but the box" approach with a guaranteed return and 90 day factory warranty feels like a winner. Many thanks to those who helped with this decision. I elected to go with the shorter return and lower price because the 1 year warranty offered elsewhere was a third party Mack camera warranty that kicked in after 90 days and I think I can add it on myself if I choose. But if not, I am sort of betting that the camera will work well past the warranty and am OK with that. As an aside, I looked at a pictorial guide showing how to tear down a D7000 camera to get to the sensor...yikes! No wonder camera repairs are so expensive. Have to wonder if they could not modularize the design in some way to avoid having to rip apart the entire camera to get to commonly repaired or replaced items.

But I digress! As part of my initial purchase of an ill-fated D7000 I also bought a David Busch guide for same. I guess it wasn't what I was expecting and am wondering if there might be better manuals. It touted itself as a guide for any level, novice to pro, to get the most out of the camera. But it seemed aimed pretty solidly at novices. Really all of it seems to be more of a feature, lens and accessories function/use guide. The Nikon manual that accompanied the D7000 (and it appears there is one for the D7100) is OK and everything you need to know seems to be in there. I am questioning whether to buy the guide for the D7100. Maybe a guide isn't really necessary and places like Nikonites forums and so forth will give me additional insight on how to use the camera to its greatest potential. But am wondering if folks have any favorite books, online tutorials, or whatever that they would recommend someone access.

Personally, I'm a fan of David's guides, but I also appreciate that everyone's learning style will be different.

You might check here (on Nikonites) for some of the youtube videos that are popular. While the majority aren't focused specifically on the D7100, many will point out the features that are ... when looking at things like autofocus modes and settings, for instance.

I have a few David Busch guide books and have always found them to be quite detailed and certainly helpful.

I don't know of any other writer that provides a better guide series.

OK, sold. Admittedly, I spent maybe 20 minutes thumbing through the D7000 manual. And I am bound to come up with a situation where I could use some in-depth focus. It is well laid out and immensely readable. A lot for the money, actually. I will get the D7100 and supplement with video tutorials.

I agree that the David Busch guides are very good. However, if you don't like them and want something much more detailed and technical, I would recommend the Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D7100. The biggest issue with his guides is them are only available as an electronic book format. You can, however, print out the entire book if you so desire. He sets up the e-version so this is fairly simple and works well. I have his D200 and D7200 manuals and am very pleased with them.

Veritas said:

But I digress! As part of my initial purchase of an ill-fated D7000 I also bought a David Busch guide for same. I guess it wasn't what I was expecting and am wondering if there might be better manuals.

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Well I guess it depends on what you mean by "better"...

I think the David Busch guides are great for what they are, and I'm a firm believer that step one should always be knowing your camera forwards and backwards, inside and out; what each button and setting does and being able to adjust settings for critical aspects that affect exposure as well as things like the various auto-focus modes, the auto-focus area-modes and how to read and interpret histograms. That, to me, is what those sorts of books are good for. So, as far as technical support books go, the guides by David Busch are some of the best, IMO.

Once you're There, though, once you really DO have all that stuff firmly ingrained in your consciousness and in order to get the most out of any camera you have to move beyond what the camera can do for you and start looking at what you can do with your camera. I guess it's sort of moving from theory into practice and that's a whole different thing. Absolute "technical accuracy" is great starting point, many people never really move past it and that's fine. But if you're looking for something less technical and more creative/artistic, if that's what you're looking for, then I can make some other suggestions.

I am in definite agreement that understanding the equipment is key and I am of the RFM era of product support (read the fricking manual)--the halcyon days of huge documentation sets that shipped with software and equipment. So I find the prospect of a 500-plus page tome on the subject of using my camera very exciting .

I didn't find the Busch guide to be overly technical. Since I had read the user manual a couple times before the camera even arrived, and had gone thru a lengthy 45 minute youtube tutorial on camera function twice, and then again with the camera in hand, pausing while I went through the different features, I guess I was angling for more. I had a sense of deja vu going through the manual .

I like technical and I like creative. But I am not comfortable using new technology unless I understand what's under the hood so to speak. I will even order repair manuals to better understand functionality. Just a personal quirk. When I found my dad's old rangefinder thrown in the back of a closet as a kid, there was no manual, no one around to show me how to use it, and no internet. I took it apart in my quest to understand how it worked, something that I was later horrified to have done and never did again, although it still works to this day, even down to the selenium cell light meter. I don't mind hacking away at something, but with a piece of equipment like this, something that offers so many features, and which is new to me, I will take all the help I can get. I don't mind a certain amount of overlap or redundancy in resources/manuals, either. Some books handle certain subjects better than others.

So this is a round about way of saying I am happy to hear any suggestions and I will check them out and knowing me, order all of them.

I had the David Busch guide for the D7000 and also thought it was an excellent resource.

I have not used any of the Creative Live courses, but I believe that someone on this forum did and really like it. Here is one specific to the D7100.

https://www.creativelive.com/courses/nikon-d7100-dslr-fast-start-john-greengo?via=site-header_0

Prefrosh01 said:

I had the David Busch guide for the D7000 and also thought it was an excellent resource.

I have not used any of the Creative Live courses, but I believe that someone on this forum did and really like it. Here is one specific to the D7100.

https://www.creativelive.com/courses/nikon-d7100-dslr-fast-start-john-greengo?via=site-header_0

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Frankly, if you want video lessons, their are too many good ones for free to pay for these. plus the big problem I have with video tutorials is that you have no future reference resource. If you need to refresh you memory (and mine needs a lot of refreshing lately) your only options are to view the tutorial again, or to take good notes when you first view the tutorial.