Nikon D5300 User Guide

The half press on the D5300's shutter button trips up almost everyone coming from a phone, because phones don't have it. Press halfway and the camera focuses and meters the scene. Press the rest of the way and it fires. That one small habit changes how every photo you take from here on turns out, and it's the kind of thing a spec sheet never mentions.

This book is built around the camera itself, not a lecture on photography theory. It starts with the body out of the box, every control on it explained by what your hand does with it, the shutter button, the mode dial, the command dial that changes jobs depending on which exposure mode you're in. From there it moves into the mode dial itself, the single control that decides how much of the decision making you're handing back to the camera versus keeping for yourself. Focus modes, RAW files, exposure bracketing, and the histogram come next, the four things that separate a photo you meant to take from one that happened by accident.

Later chapters cover interval shooting for star trails, mirror lock up for sensor cleaning, and auto ISO for a room where the light keeps changing on you.

Each chapter handles one job and stands on its own, so you can start wherever your current problem actually lives instead of reading five chapters to get to the one you needed.

Keep the camera in your hands while you go through it. The fingers pick this up faster than the memory does, and that's the whole reason this book was written the way it was.