Nikon D60 For Dummies

Julie Adair King

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118052648
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Digital Media

You've decided to upgrade from your old point-and-shoot by purchasing the compact and economical Nikon D60, an SLR model without all the bulk. Now, make the most of your new digital camera by actually learning how to use all those options and settings! Take advantage of external controls and learn how to navigate the camera menus to fully customize internal options so that you can capture, share, and print photographs like a professional.

You'll find out how to understand the controls, navigate the menus, choose your settings, access internal options, and become familiar with automatic modes. You'll learn to use the Image Quality and Image Size settings, which are necessary for both automatic and manual picture-taking. Then, you can easily express your creativity by managing aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and editing your photographs on a computer. You will download photos and print them to share with your friends and family! You will find out how to:

• Master camera controls
• Use automatic and manual modes
• Change, focus, and zoom lenses
• Adjust picture quality and resolution
• Manipulate exposure and lighting
• Work with picture files
• Print and share photos

Complete with lists of ten photo-retouching tricks from repairing red eye to cropping photos and ten special-purpose features you can explore on a rainy day, Nikon D60 For Dummies is your one-stop guide to taking and sharing the pictures like a pro.

Part I

Fast Track to Super Snaps

In this part . . .

Making sense of all the controls on your D60 isn’t something you can do in an afternoon — heck, in a week, or maybe even a month. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take great pictures today. By using your camera’s point-and-shoot automatic modes, you can capture terrific images with very little effort. All you do is compose the scene, and the camera takes care of almost everything else.

This part shows you how to take best advantage of your camera’s automatic features and also addresses some basic setup steps, such as adjusting the viewfinder to your eyesight and getting familiar with the camera menus, buttons, and dials. In addition, chapters in this part explain how to obtain the very best picture quality, whether you shoot in an automatic or manual mode, and how to use your camera’s picture- playback features.

1

Getting the Lay of the Land

In This Chapter

Attaching and using an SLR lens

Adjusting the viewfinder to your eyesight

Working with camera memory cards

Getting acquainted with external camera controls

Using the camera menus and Shooting Info display

Choosing shooting options via the Quick Settings display

Deciphering the viewfinder data

Displaying onscreen help

Customizing basic camera operations

I still remember the day that I bought my first SLR film camera. I was excited to finally move up from my one-button point-and-shoot camera, but I was a little anxious, too. My new pride and joy sported several unfamiliar buttons and dials, and the explanations in the camera manual clearly were written for someone with an engineering degree. And then there was the whole business of attaching the lens to the camera, an entirely new task for me. I saved up my pennies a long time for that camera — what if my inexperience caused me to damage the thing before I even shot my first pictures?

You may be feeling similarly insecure if your Nikon D60 is your first SLR, although some of the buttons on the camera back may look familiar if you’ve previously used a digital point-and-shoot camera. If your D60 is both your first SLR and first digital camera, you may be doubly intimidated.

Trust me, though, that your camera isn’t nearly as complicated as its exterior makes it appear. With a little practice and the help of this chapter, which introduces you to each external control, you’ll quickly become as comfortable with your camera’s buttons and dials as you are with the ones on your car’s dashboard.

This chapter also guides you through the process of mounting and using an SLR lens, working with digital memory cards, and navigating your camera’s internal menus. And for times when you don’t have this book handy, I show you how to access the Help system that’s built into your camera.

Getting Comfortable with Your Lens

One of the biggest differences between a point-and-shoot camera and an SLR (single-lens reflex) camera is the lens. With an SLR, you can swap out lenses to suit different photographic needs, going from an extreme close-up lens to a super-long telephoto, for example. In addition, an SLR lens has a movable focusing ring that gives you the option of focusing manually instead of relying on the camera’s autofocus mechanism.

Of course, those added capabilities mean that you need a little background information to take full advantage of your lens. To that end, the next four sections explain the process of attaching, removing, and using this critical part of your camera.

Attaching a lens

Whatever lens you choose, follow these steps to attach it to the camera body:

1. Remove the cap that covers the lens mount on the front of the camera.

2. Remove the cap that covers the back of the lens.

The cap is the one that doesn’t say Nikon on it, in case you aren’t sure.

3. Hold the lens in front of the camera so that the little white dot on the lens aligns with the matching dot on the camera body.

Official photography lingo uses the term mounting index instead of little white dot. Either way, you can see the markings in question in Figure 1-1.

Note that the figure (and others in this chapter) shows you the D60 with its so-called “kit lens” — the 18–55mm Vibration ...