Preface

You don’t want good pictures from your new Nikon D3400—you demand outstanding photos. After all, the D3400 is the most advanced true entry-level camera that Nikon has ever introduced. It boasts an amazing 24 megapixels of resolution and full high-definition movie-making capabilities. But your gateway to pixel proficiency is dragged down by the slim little pamphlet included in the box as a manual. Nikon doesn’t even include a full printed manual for this camera—it’s available only as a downloadable PDF file!

You know everything you need to know is in there, somewhere, but you don’t know where to start, and you probably don’t like the idea of having to read your manual on a computer screen. In addition, the PDF camera manual doesn’t offer much information on photography or digital photography. Nor are you interested in spending hours or days studying a comprehensive book on digital SLR photography that doesn’t necessarily apply directly to your D3400.

What you need is a guide that explains the purpose and function of the D3400’s basic controls, how you should use them, and why. Ideally, there should be information about file formats, resolution, exposure, and special autofocus modes, but you’d prefer to read about those topics only after you’ve had the chance to go out and take a few hundred great pictures with your new camera. If you can’t decide on what basic settings to use with your camera because you can’t figure out how changing ISO or white balance or focus defaults will affect your pictures, you need this guide. I won’t talk down to you, either; this book isn’t padded with dozens of pages of checklists telling you how to take a travel picture, a sports photo, or how to take a snapshot of your kids in overly simplistic terms. There are no special sections devoted to “real-world” recipes here. All of us do 100 percent of our shooting in the real world! So, I give you all the information you need to cook up great photos on your own!