dSLR: Nikon D70 eBook

D70 Nikon gets an eBook all its own.

The D70 is complex. Not complicated, just complex. It's a veritable treasure house of features, abilities and especially, buttons.

Knowing when to press the button is Good. Knowing WHY to press the button is Better.

If the universe were a perfect place, you could have the design team at your elbow steering you this way and that as you learned and used the camera. What "dSLR: Nikon D70 eBook" does is the next best thing.

Sure, every button and dial is covered in the manual, but knowing what each thing does is not knowing when to use it, when to avoid it, when it will help you, and when it is irrelevant. For those moments, there is the eBook.

You'll get to see the camera from the image chip to CompactFlash card, and everything in between.

Contents:

Main eBook: 14 chapters, 2 volumes, 446 pages, 1100 images--many of them interactive right on the page, charts, diagrams and illustrations. Including a D70 image Gallery, interactive Appendix and 460+ exclusive original iNovaFX Photoshop Actions, many specially formulated to the D70 colorimetry and optics.

The 400% Solution:

Some folks think of eBooks as being less than a paper book. That's old-think. We've made this eBook much more dynamic, much easier to browse, much higher in image quality than any paper book.

For instance: Image Quality. You can't zoom into the image on a printed book by 400%. All you would see with the book three inches from your nose would be printing dots (if you could focus that close at all). But with the DSLR: Nikon D70 eBook you CAN blow the images up as much as 400% without seeing pixels. We've made every image far higher in quality than you have ever experienced in a PDF document. Small images can be viewed huge. Large images can be viewed bigger than your computer screen.

Interactive Images:

Many of the images are interactive. Roll your mouse over a picture and it animates instantly. Sometimes an A/B comparison is best when the image changes in place. Sometimes you need to directly compare A, B and C. And the interactive images are just as high quality as all the rest. Captions guide you to compare image states.

Take a test: Some images challenge you to tell the differences between image A and image B. The answer can only be read by blowing up the page until tiny type becomes large enough to read.

Big Printable Pages:

These eBook pages are big. Each one fills a letter page with solid information, facts, tips, techniques and illustrations. All pages can be printed out in laser B&W or ink-jet full color occupying a full letter sheet per page of eBook. This is what they look like:

Bonus Volume:

Included is a second volume, a RAW image processing eBook, RAW Materials by Uwe Steinmueller featuring Nikon Capture, Photoshop CS and Capture One work methods, tips, techniques and .NEF lore. Uwe is today's leading expert in RAW format images.

Plus:

Original D70 image files for direct inspection and manipulation. Tutorials for exotic Photoshop manipulations use D70 images on your own computer screen.

And then there are the InfoBites:

Like a thousand concise essays on what to look for, how to get better results, what to avoid, clues to better images and points to keep in mind, the InfoBites flow throughout the text, gently guiding and reminding you that digital photography is filled with cool ideas.

Last count: Over 420 InfoBites in the camera system operation chapter alone! Hundreds more are sprinkled throughout the other eBook chapters.

For those who missed InfoBite class, these are facts, factoids, tips, techniques, pitfalls, work arounds, clues, cues and truths that every D70 owner should be aware of.

You won't memorize them all, but when the time comes, you'll be able to say, "I seem to remember that if you do this instead of that--yes, that did it. Now everything is better."

Each InfoBite is identified with the purple i-dot seen here at the beginning of a paragraph. It helps you find them on the page and makes your brain hang on to them longer.

InfoBites covering:

How to make the camera invisible to you.*
How to make better pictures.
How to make your pictures better.
How to know the difference.
How to keep your color straight.
How this feature works at a nitty-gritty level.
How to fix things when you err.
How to fix things when the camera errs.
How to shoot infrared.
How to make optics perform better.
How to avoid flash blinkers.*
How to make the camera do things it wasn't designed to do.*
How to make your printer do things it wasn't designed to do.*
When to push those two buttons at the same time.
When not to push those two buttons at the same time.
When to throw this switch before you do that operation.
Things they never told you in the manual.*
Things they didn't want to explain in that sort of document.*
...and 400+ other things, too.*

There's even a special sub-chapter on the workings and operation of the SB-800/600 flash units. It has its own InfoBites.

Techniques in Abundance:

Not everything is InfoBites. Spread throughout the text are concepts, shooting techniques, digital darkrooming techniques, uniquely digital photographic opportunities, comparisons to film photography and novel ways to make more interesting images. Here are just a few:

How to make double exposures with greater control than making them in-camera with a D2X. (Nikon's D2X is their much more expensive camera with in-camera double exposure)*
How to shoot with low cost slave flash units that trigger off a single flash pulse.*
How to get the most out of the IR wireless remote (optional accessory).
How to shoot time-lapse.*
How to read Histograms.
How to shoot off TV screens.
How to stretch your memory.
How to print on papers you'd probably never think to use.*
How to make panoramic perfection.*
How to get 4x5 camera swings and tilts.
How to straighten out a Fisheye Nikkor 10.5mm lens.*
How to replace blue skies with dramatic skies.
How to compute D70 DOF.*
How to engage photo editors.
How to shoot candids that tell stories.*
How to print stories in storyboard format.*
How to practice photography to "make perfect."

...and a whole lot more

* Denotes items we've never even seen in any other photographic texts.

FX Galore:

And how about those exclusive, entirely original high tech iNovaFX Photoshop Actions that come with the eBook? These are Photoshop Actions designed for use with your D70. All are original and cannot be acquired anywhere else. Many have over 100 steps and they all are designed to make your photographic results better.

Others sell Photoshop Actions of similar quality for $10 per group. There are 58 groups of them here. You do the math.

iNovaFX do five basic things for you:

FIX. Some correct image "errors" such as white balance mistakes or barrel distortion. As an example, one series removes so much barrel distorion it absolutely flattens Nikon's Fisheye images! Not kidding!
TRANSCEND. Others improve image limitations like making ISO 3200 work quite decently for D70 exposures, for instance. Others reduce noise in shadow areas only.
FILTER. A whole category adds artistic enhancements such as cross star filters, grad filters, diffusion filters, B&W conversions with color filter augmentation and even post-production polarizing filtration for blue skies. Some in this group produce gradations over existing images that function like physical grad filters.
EFFECTS. Another category produces special effects using unique combinations of Photoshop's native plug-ins. These are Photoshop's own techniques seen from a fresh point of view. Many are performed combining two or more PS plug-ins in a single stroke.
TRANSFORM. Yet another group prepares images for custom printing with operations like duotones, multi-image layouts, complex darkroom enhancements and special frames. Included here is a large array of Actions that turn photos into graphics and artistic interpretations. Meaning that when you get down, making an infrared oil painting is not out of the question.

Here is an example from that last category. It's a precision "35mm frame" that is wrapped around a full size D70 image making a finished file 3138 x 2905 pixels large (88 times the surface area seen at right).

The image is identified as a "D70 Digital Image" and while the default text identifies the "film" type as iNovaChrome, the text can be changed at will, for a copyright notice perhaps.

Note the subtle digitographer point that this is frame 37. Other frames in this particular folder of Actions create roll film and 4X5 sheet film borders.

The amazing iNovaFX Action called the iBCFish10.5-Hyper isn't exactly "fixing" an image that's broke, per se, it really opens up that lens to a different form of use. Click on the name to read the report.

Some of the Actions are tutorial in nature, teaching and showing how to stitch precision panoramics or how to make view camera perspective corrections using Photoshop's built-in features. And for those, image files are provided.