Customer Rating: 
Summary: Best Manual Yet
Comment: Only in 3rd chapter, but this book is far better than any of his others. Diagrams and pictures are large and in color and Busch is extremely thorough. All content is about the D300; not a lot of generic digital photography fluff. Not only is this the first book out on the D300, but probably the best, by far.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nikon D300 Explained
Comment: The book is very well written and gives an excellent explanation of all camera controls and options. The best part is the explanation of the "why" of all options.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Perfect advanced guide for this camera
Comment: Beginners and advanced photographers will love this plain-speaking, but in-depth explanation of the new Nikon D300 digital SLR.
David Busch is becoming one of my favorite authors. I've reviewed several of his books, including a few of his camera guides, and what I appreciate most is that he has the ability to write at exactly the right level for his intended audience. His guide to the Nikon D80, for example, was aimed at entry-level photographers who aspired to greater proficiency, and did a good job of guiding them along this path while explaining the features and settings of the camera fully.
Now Busch has written a guide for the Nikon D300, and he seems to recognize that a book that sticks to an entry-level approach won't work with a camera that has such a rich set of capabilities. Even so, he does a good job with the first few chapters and the introductory material in later chapters of providing a solid grounding in basic ideas.
New photographers are not dumped in over their heads. Even more advanced photographers may learn something new from Busch's explanations. But this book excels when it comes to going beyond the basics, providing more detail and advice than you're likely to find in other, less ambitious guidebooks. For example, his explanation of autofocus, particularly as it applies to the two methods available with the D300's Live View mode, is the clearest I've ever seen.
If you want a book that is much more than a rephrasing of the product manual, and which contains everything you need to know to get the most out of your D300, this is the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent D300 Guide. Probably His Best Book Yet
Comment: I received my D300 in December 2007 and as of the end of April 2008, I've shot 15,600 photos. This book is the perect guide for any D300 owner. Some of the menu options are different from D200 or D80 and the author does a very good job explaining what is different and why.
The book covers all the camera features and gives you ideas about how to best use the features. The book is over 400 pages and larger in size than previous guides of this type. It makes it easier to read. The book is full of color examples.
There is a great section on lenses, flashes. advanced shooting tips, etc.
The manual that comes with the camera is okay to a point, but it has no dicussion. David's book dicusses why you should do something a certain way rather than just listing the options and letting you figure it out.
I learned a lot and will keep reading it to learn everything I can to improve my photography.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Advanced camera serves this in-depth coverage
Comment: I purchased my Nikon D300 in December and at that time bought the Nikon D200 Digital Field Guide because nothing else was available for my camera. I went with the same author, David Busch, for my first D300 book, and I am glad I did! As good as the D200 Digital Field Guide was, the approach taken in this book is much, much better.
Compared to the Digital Field Guides, this book has much more depth and a lot more information on how to use the camera. It's a 450-page full size book with roughly twice the content of a Digital Field Guide, and it features large color illustrations rather than postage stamp sized pictures. To give you the idea of the depth of coverage, this book devotes 117 pages just to menus and setup options, with exhaustive descriptions of how each menu entry works, and why you'd want to select a particular setting. And that doesn't even count a half dozen pages in a later chapter with tables that provide recommended Shooting Menu Bank and Custom Setting Menu Bank settings for particular types of photography.
I particularly enjoyed the 40 pages devoted to lenses, including reviews of all the key lenses available for my Nikon D300. There are another 40 pages on working with light and using the confusing Nikon Creative Lighting System.
Is there anything left out? This time, Busch does not devote a third of the pages to checklist recipes for common shooting situations, as he did with his D200 Digital Field Guide. I think that the owner of a camera this advanced probably doesn't need a couple pages of summaries on how to take photos of seascapes or sunsets. I'd rather have the solid information in this book, which equipped me to go out and take any kind of picture I want to.
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