There's a lot to learn about modern cameras that the manufacturers don't bother to include in their manuals. I bought this manual on a lark (it was cheap), to see whether it really went beyond my owners manual or not. In the end, I find it really doesn't in any significant way. In virtually every case where I've had a concern with my D3x that I wanted to understand more deeply, the advice of this book merely repeated what my owners manually already rather unhelpfully (and opaquely) told me. And, in the few cases where he did go beyond the manual, it was in a strangely incomplete way. Example: after spending months reviewing my images in real time by holding down the magnification button and turning the wheel through 9 separate levels of magnification (Nikon's default mode for this), all the while guessing which was the 100% magnification, it struck me one day that there had to be a better way, a single-button solution to get me to the 100% view that is so essential in real-time shooting to determine sharpness. What Stafford's book DID tell me that the Nikon owner's manual did not (just amazing really, to charge that kind of money for a camera and include such deficient documentation) was that the 7th of those 9 magnification steps was the 100% step, and that information I greatly appreciated. What he didn't bother to mention in that section was that there is a way to program the camera to get you there in one button press. Instead, I was left fending for myself with the horrendous Nikon manual, which tells you the programmable feature for this function offers 3 options for magnification, labeled something like minimum, medium, and maximum (yes, no connection is made to their 9-step magnification default - I gather Nikon's engineers are not helpful people either :) I had to get advice from an online forum (dpreview.com) to realize that for whatever bizarre reason, its the medium setting that corresponds to the 100% view.
In summary, I felt like Stafford whipped this guide together very haphazardly, and I cannot recommend it. Many others exist, and I may try one of those just to see if I can identify an author who delivers any substantial value here.
