Nikon D80 (Magic Lantern Guides) Paperback – April 1, 2007

Some of the value of this book lies in Nikon's lousy D80 manual. Nikon's manual is ill organized and printed in gray on toilet paper. Okay, maybe it is recycled paper.Stafford's Guide is full of well-organized information. It is well printed. I can even recognize the small icons in the text (not true of all camera books). I wish publishers would not shrink icons a second time to place them in tables. However, even these tiniest of icons are recognizable in this Guide.The author, Simon Stafford, is an experienced photographer and author. His Scottish education and UK roots show through in his language but are not distracting. Unfortunately, poor editing diminishes Stafford's excellent writing and technical presentation. Lesser typographical errors are just distracting but some errors get in the way of understanding. "...offers the photographer total control overexposure, ..." stumps the eye until you realize it should have been "...over exposure".That said, Magic Lantern/Lark Books printed the book on decent paper (except the covers curl) and with black ink. Vastly better than Nikon's manual. The photos, especially the super-close-up photos of the D80's anatomy, are very clear. The rich typography is excellent: headings are bold, bullets are well used to structure lists, captions are set off and readable, and on and on. Point being, the production folk have done about all that can be done to make the printed material easy to read and understand. It is as if this book was well conceived, well designed, well written, and well printed, but the publisher skipped the final steps of preprinting production: the editing and index are not up to the quality of the rest of the book. The index should be five times its skimpy two pages of large print. I go on about the index because we are reading this book not for pleasure but to learn something: to understand how to use the D80's features. Especially, I want to be able to quickly locate how to change camera settings. Fortunately, the Table of Contents is nine pages of compact, structured, easy-to-scan print and stands in for the unusable index.I seldom find book glossaries useful. This book is an exception. The sixty-plus terms are well selected and the several-to-many-sentence descriptions contain just the right amount and level of information.So why five stars after all the griping and groaning? You can get past the inadequate final editing and the printing keeps the content from turning to mush; in fact, the printing lifts Stafford's excellent writing up and makes its content quick and easy to understand and retain. The book is 334 pages not counting the index (and you should not count the index). I can't believe the low price. Content, printing, and price offset the editing. For its few flaws, it really is an excellent book.

OK, there are numerous minor typos and grammatical errors in this book. But anyone with a lick of sense can easily read through them and get a ton of very valuable information about a very sophisticated camera! The author's suggestions for settings are very valuable and made with thought and logic. The Nikon manual is very hard to read and has been printed so much that the printing plates are worn out and the menu and camera symbals are unreadable. This a much preffered book in my opinion. And in addition it's also more thorough. I highly recommend it, typos and all! Since you already have, or contemplate getting, a Nikon D80, get this book, it will be invaluable.

I have not finished this book yet, but it is a manual not a novel: having said that... Well bound,heavy white paper,big text, images sharp, clear in strong half tone.There are no colour plates but the black and whites are stunning. This effort is in contrast to the original Nikon manual which is none of the above.There are a few curious spell errors, however,if you are a digislr rookie like me you will want all the help you can get to understand the encyclopeadic volume of informaton it takes to get the most from this fabulous camera.

OMG this DVD is great! Nikon makes great cameras, but lousy manuals. This 90 min DVD is very professionally done. Gives tips, tricks, and ample suggestions for settings and use. Clear, concise, and full of examples and information to make the D80 a breeze to use. I was so impressed I bought the Magic Lantern manual to go along with this DVD. A must have for D80 owners. Good work Magic Lantern!!!! I thought I was using my D80 to the fullest for the past 2 years, but after I watched this DVD I realized that I was just scratching the surface before. It's like I just bought a new camera two years later!

I am new to dslr's. Inching my way into the D80 with just the manual was a long tedious process. The DVD guide was very helpful in getting started, but that's where the help ended. It got me started but no more. I expect a lot more depth into digital photography in general and on using the advanced modes (P, S, A, M) specifically. The DVD describes these modes and provides the obvious. But we, novices, need most of the help with the PSAM modes, not the PhD (push here dummy) modes. The result - I have yet to get a picture in one of these modes that is better than the PhD modes. The editors may excuse this superficiality that depth is beyond the scope of the DVD. Well, OK, that's why they get only 3 stars. Add more depth and you may get five.

This is actually the manual Nikon should include with the D80. If this is your first Nikon DSRL you should read it from start to finish. Many parts will be boring because it covers subjects you already now from your SRL photography experience. However you will find all over the book interesting and useful things about the D80. The Nikon D80 manual coverage on the camera es to brief, and you need a lot of experimentation to discover how things work. The Magic Lantern book covers things in detail, with this book you should also experiment, but basically practice the acquired knowledge.

The Magic Lantern Guide for the Nikon D80, is the best instructional/reference book I have found for my Nikon D80. If you are satisfied with taking pictures with your Nikon DSLR, in the "Auto-Mode", don't bother buying this book. But, if you want to get the most out of your camera and learn how to use the "Manual-Modes", this book is great! It explains all of the settings that are available for taking great photographs, not just snapping pictures.

This book is a good reference and has a lot of helpful hints and suggestions. That alone is worth the price of this book. I recommend the book for the serious D80 user.The typos and grammatical errors are numerous. Who edited this book?Bottom line, for less than $15.00, this book is a good value if you can overlook the errors.