Product Description
MAGIC LANTERN GUIDES: NIKON D50, Simon Stafford, A Lark Photography Book Simon Stafford's photographs have been used widely in newspapers, books, calendars, and magazines. Completely self-taught, he has built up a wealth of experience over the past twenty years with both film and digital cameras. Throughout his photographic career he has used the Nikon system extensively, and is now the Technical Editor to the Nikon Owners' Club International's Nikon Owner magazine. Amateur photographers can explore their creativity and get professional results with Nikon's offerings in the world of consumer digital SLR photography. In addition to being compact, lightweight, and wonderfully easy to use, the D50 features a 6.1-effective megapixel sensor, 5-area autofocus, and a large 2-inch LCD. All this, along with the superb Nikkor optics and high-performance zoom, make the Nikon D50 one of the top-selling cameras in its class. This guide covers it all written by the technical editor of the Nikon Owners' Club International's Nikon Owner magazine it is the perfect way for the proud owner of this digital model to learn every facet of this capable camera and get beautiful, expertly shot photos. 5 X 7 1/2. b/w illus. throughout

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 8 reviews)

nikon - no longer the underdog

there was a time when nikon was the underdog (to the evil empire known as c*non).
but that has changed. Nikon D90 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor Zoom Lens

case in point
September 17, 2008

Too many errors

This book is helpful with the basics, but the amount of errors located throughout really makes you second guess the author/editors. I recommend going with the Nikon D50 Field Guide, and skipping the Magic Lantern Guide.
August 25, 2007

This is the manual that should come with this camera

This book is so much more in depth then the manual D50 comes with. Full of great info. and at a very good price too.
January 03, 2007

Agree with Sloppy..

Worst introduction book on D50. This book is a copy of "instruction manual" that comes with the camera. Author has just added some of his descriptive paragraphs.
Average time to write books like this: 1 night.
Don't waste your money! I bought it and returned it back. Read manual, you will get the same information for free.
September 27, 2006

Sloppy

I think the other reviewers don't understand the rating system - 1 star bad, 5 stars good.

Although there is some useful information in this book, overall it is full of errors, poorly organized, and doesn't provide much more than the manual considering the number of pages and the price ($20 list).

Here are a few problems:

- Black and white photos - that alone should tell you how much faith the publishers have in the book. They didn't want to invest a lot in it knowing how bad it was.

- Following the White Balance topic is White Balance Bracketing. The latter includes the steps for setting White Balancing but NOT Bracketing.

- In the chapter Quick Start-up guide he gives a couple of paragraphs on each of the Vari-Program modes. But the next chapter on Detail he goes right into White Balancing without mentioning which mode you can use. This is common through out the book.

- He constantly refers to the menu options by name. Why didn't they include the icons for designating the menu options as they do refering to non-menu items?

- Speaking of icons and errors, the icon is wrong on page 119 for selecting the histogram.

- He tried to fill pages with information that was already in the manual such as several pages on how to install the battery and the memory card.

- There are plenty of typos like you instead of your, repeated words, missing spaces, much, much more.

- page 90 shows a list of how many pictures can be in the buffer. On the left under quality it shows JPEG Large which should be Fine.

With the number of errors in the book I question the accuracy of the information and suggestions by the author. The topics are not organized well enough to be used as a reference. It's almost as if he sat and rambled into a recorder and gave it off to someone to type up. Not much thought was put into how the information was presented.

What I was really hoping for and what is drastically missing is how the different features could be used to affect the photos. Examples (which would have to be in color) of the same scene with different settings. What settings to use in different situations, etc. There are a lot of features in this camera but putting them to use can be overwhelming.

I gave it 2 stars as I did get a little out of it but I had to wade through a lot to find it.

June 06, 2006

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Nikon D50 Digital Field Guide
by David D. Busch

Nikon ML-L3 Wireless Remote Control for Nikon D40, D40x, D60 & D80 Digital SLR Cameras
Nikon

Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition)
by Bryan Peterson

Introduction to the Nikon D50 Digital SLR
Directed by Blue Crane Digital
Starring Graham Sterling
Blue Crane

Nikon Lens Pen Cleaning System
Nikon