Photographer's Guide to the Nikon Coolpix P500: Getting the Most from Nikon's Superzoom Digital Camera

Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video

Photographer's Guide to the Nikon Coolpix P500: Getting the Most from Nikon's Superzoom Digital Camera Details

Photographer's Guide to the Nikon Coolpix P500 is a follow-up to the earlier guides in this series dealing with advanced compact digital cameras, including, most recently, the Panasonic Lumix LX5 and the Canon PowerShot S95. The new book, like the earlier ones, explains all operations, features, menus, and controls of the Coolpix P500 camera in clear language, providing guidance not only about how to accomplish things with the camera, but when and why to use certain features. The book does not assume any specialized knowledge by the reader, but adopts a patient and helpful tone in explaining topics such as autofocus, manual focus, depth of field, aperture priority, shutter priority, HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, and macro photography. The book also includes a detailed discussion of techniques for using the phenomenal zoom lens of this camera, with a maximum focal length of 810mm, to full advantage. The book contains more than 200 photographs, almost all in full color, which provide illustrations of the controls and menus of the Coolpix P500, and also include examples of the various types of photographs that can be taken using the many creative settings of the camera, including the Optimize Image settings, which let the photographer alter the color processing of images; the Scene modes, with settings that are optimized for various subjects, including landscapes, portraits, and action shots; and the particularly strong array of features the camera offers for continuous shooting and interval shooting. In addition, the book goes beyond the realm of everyday photography, and provides introductions to more advanced topics such as panoramas, infrared photography, street photography, and creating 3D (three-dimensional) images that can be viewed with conventional red and blue 3D glasses. The book also includes a full discussion of the video recording abilities of the Coolpix P500, which can record high-definition (HD) video with stereo sound, and which has special settings for recording short clips of high-speed video at rates up to 8 times normal speed. In three appendices, the book provides information about accessories available for the camera, sets forth a list of useful web sites and other resources for further information, and includes a section with helpful quick tips that give particular insights into how to take advantage of the features of the Coolpix P500 in the most efficient ways possible.

Reviews

This book presents the same technical information that is in the camera manual using many more pages, but the material is better organized and should be easier for a beginner to learn from. The book does not totally replace the manual, which contains some useful diagrams and technical details that are not in the book. The best things about the book are the example photographs that demonstrate and compare the effects of many of the camera modes, and the practical advice from a professional photographer on how to best use the camera settings. The most difficult aspect of the camera for me to learn was how many of the modes work together. The settings are buried in different camera menus and the connections between them are not intuitive for a novice photographer - you just have to learn about them. I found myself making charts and tables of the camera settings to help keep them straight until I became familiar with them. The best way to learn how to use the camera is to go through all the modes one-by-one, using the book or manual as a guide, and shoot lots of practice pictures until you understand how they all work. An experienced photographer can skip this book and just refer to the manual as needed.

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