Nikon D3400 For Dummies (For Dummies (Lifestyle)) Paperback – December 27, 2016

The book is easy to follow and you can learn a lot

I must start this by stating that I deplore the dummy subtitle for the dummies series....Getting past that prejudice, I found the book informative, sequenced brilliantly, and extremely clear.I recently bought a Nikon, my first DSLR camera. Prior to this, I always used a point-and-shoot. I signed up for a Craftsy class, a very basic one, and to my dismay, I was totally overwhelmed by my lack of experience and knowledge.With this book in hand, A highlighter, and my new Nikon, I read the book page by page, marking sections, looking closely at the graphics and finding each on my camera. Not light reading, this process took me many weeks to learn the first five chapters.But now. Heh. Heh. Heh. My husband calls me the Grandma Moses of photography :-) (If you are not old enough to know what that means, just do a Google.) A day does not go by when I am not outside shooting on aperture while fine tuning my ISO and exposure compensation. No blinkies here!

It’s a well written book and I like the reminder pictures of which button to use because as you read you forget and you would otherwise have to keep flipping back to the beginning. I found what was most useful are the real life sample shots.. author gives a scenario like say you want to take a portrait shot indoors; he will give instructions on just how to do that. I wish there were more samples like this for the macro photography area. People taking pictures of objects not flowers.. but I realize he has to be general and the book is good for very general. I do wish the manual focus chapter delved deeper into depth of field and another scenario would be added. Also, I felt the half auto modes like A and S... like where you set the aperture and the camera adjusts the shutter speed for you.. I wish that went slightly deeper and gave another example for each mode. Lastly, the author goes into great detail about the on camera flash but could we have a section on the Nikon speed light? That would so complete it for me as he speaks about how to use the lenses why not touch on that instead of getting so deep into how to adjust your photos on the computer. That area is unnecessary to me because it’s not about the camera function or what you can do with this camera. It’s what you can do with your photos already taken. Still for those of you who really dig deep and want to fix photos already taken then that’s for you. I guess I’d just rather take the shot in the way I want it that do a bunch of editing. Lastly why not talk about filters, how to set up lights that function with the camera, how to setup a shoot cord.. not just the Nikon wireless button thing.. how about how to keep this camera clean and how to properly clean your lens? These are all things I have to look up separately and I guess maybe I’m looking for that true all in one book about the camera and the things you can do with it.. this is a basic understanding of modes, buttons, and some theory behind the modes and buttons along with some sample shots. The book still brought me a step closer to feeling like I grasp what I can do.. but I still feel so far away from truly understanding. I need a class:(

The book was exactly as described, fast delivery, received in perfect condition. Satisfied with my order.

No dislikes

I messed around and taught myself a lot on my 3400, but once I began reading this, the quality of my photographs improved exponentially. Even more important, I now understand a lot of language I'd been struggling with-- the book does a very good job of clarifying what can be confusing terminology that seems counter intuitive. I study this religiously, and now I have a much better idea of wtf I'm doing.

This really went into the details of the camera. I've read it 2 times and I'm sure I'm not done yet.One helpful hint I can give the readers is the author made it a point to recommend a particular USB cable to use to transfer the images to a PC. I have found that my standard PC to smartphone cable works just fine and is a lot cheaper to buy than a fancy one she mentions in the book. The Amazon Basics Android to PC USB cable works just fine. Overall a great book. There's a few gaps when it comes to how to use the Nikon software to manage images. But if you are like me and a newbie to DSLR photography and the D3400 is your camera, this is money will spent.

I purchased my Nikon 3400, w/o any instructions, as my first DSLR. I had had a "film" SLR many years ago before it was stolen. I have been using point and shoot cameras for many years then moved to photos by cellphone. I decided it was time to try SLRs again so I bought the highly rated DSLR for newcomers. I saw immediately that I needed something that explained all of the features and how to use them. This book has been the answer I needed. I highly recommend this book. From experience I believe this book It is not only useful to beginners with the 3400 but also to those who have been using the 34000 for a while.