Howdy all,

I recently bought my wife a camera (Nikon D40) after she dragged me round holidays taking photos of pretty much everything with her crappy little pocket camera. Well, now that she has got this camera, I'm wondering if you guys can point her in the direction of some useful sites/books to help her make full use of the potential this camera offers.

Are there any good alternatives to PhotoShop for editing any photos for a PC/MAC?

I'm not after anything in depth, just stuff to help her get started and rather than trawl through googles umpteen results on photography for beginners, I thought I would just check in with you guys to see if you had anything you found useful in the past.

Thanks

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TheGing

There are many nikon groups on flickr that will be very helpful along with many youtube videos and most photo magazine websites.

For editing you can start with the Gimp, use NX2 that comes with the camera (costs after the trial) or get adobe lightroom2 which works great. It is what I use with my nikon d60

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Hey

regarding software, and keep in mind I've not used either extensively, I prefer Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 over Photoshop. And at the moment it's even on sale through the weekend, regularly $99, now only $59...

.02






Linkage

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cool, thanks for the tips guys

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TheGing

I have never seen a Nikon users manual, but I can tell you that the manuals that came with my Canon XTI, and my Canon 5D both had a lot of very useful information in them. It is surprising how many people don't read them. These manuals detail how the different shooting modes work (AV, M, TV, etc), how to effectively use them, and what to expect from them.

Again, I am not at all familiar with the software that Nikon bundles with their cameras, but with Canon their Zoombrowser and Digital Photo Professional software is actually very good. I guess all I'm saying is that she should try what came with the camera before going out and buying something else.

As far as other sources of information; I personally have learned a tremendous amount at the Fred Miranda Forums http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/. I hang out a lot in the people forums, where photos are regularly submitted by members for critique. By using the search function in the different forum sections you can easily find information on different software, etc.

I'm sure she's going to get lots of good photos with the D40!

Mark

Ive never read a camera manual, most of the stuff i find out was from reading online and messing around...

A good site i use alot is http://digital-photography-school.com/, lots of tut's and helpful people as well as little weekly comp's that you can take part in.

For me, i started shooting in Av when i got my first camera (fz8) and kept shooting in Av since (or Manual..) I like to have control over the aperture since that in turn determines how much is in focus.

I dont know how good a manual would be tho.. im sure it will have lots of info but take my gx10. There's lots of little short cuts to options that arnt in the book (were added later in firmware) like pressing OK and moving a wheel to change iso without going into the menu's.


The best advice i ever read tho was to just keep shooting

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Panasonic Gf1,samsung Gx10, pentax k5 and a bunch of lights n lens.