Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D70 1st Edition By Thom Hogan byThom Press Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the D70 Page 1 Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D70 First Edition 2004 Published in the United States by byThom Press Emmaus, PA 18049 http://www.bythom.com © 2004 Thom Hogan All Rights Reserved All photographs by and © Thom Hogan This book is not sponsored by Nikon Corporation. Information, data, and procedures described herein are correct to the best of the author’s and publisher’s knowledge; all other liability is expressly disclaimed. Nikkor, Nikon, and Speedlight are registered trademarks of Nikon Corporation, Japan. CompactFlash is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation. All other products or name brands are trademarks of their respective manufacturers. The author and publisher shall not be responsible for errors contained herein or any damages in connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of the material in this book. In particular, the author and publisher shall not be responsible for any damage to the CCD of the camera of any reader who follows the cleaning instructions contained in this book. Nor shall the author and publisher be responsible for damage to camera electronics by anyone attempting to make their own external power supply based upon the ideas presented in this book. It’s a sad commentary on our society that I even need to include this disclaimer. 1st Edition, version 1.06: 5/22/04 Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the D70 Page 2 Acknowledgements As with all my books, a full draft was reviewed by volunteers to weed out unclear language and any misstatements. My thanks go to John Allman, Koen Beets, Paul Beiser, Andrew Burns, Tom Canning, Timothy Farr, Chris Fierro, George Feigelstock, Richard Freeman, Kenneth Gunn, Iain McKerchar, Simon Langham, Thomas Mortensen, Steve Moody, Daniel Neo, Hans-Jürgen Reichelt, Andrew Salamy, Jerry Smith, Andrzej Taramina, Peter Visima, Witold Waldman, and Doug Werner for their thorough review and comments (all told, over 100 single-spaced pages of notes came from the reviewers, which took me several days to integrate). This book is better because of them. Several Web sites proved useful in researching aspects of this book. While I mention several at appropriate points in the book, two need to be singled out for D70 users: • Phil Askey’s http://www.dpreview.com not only has some of the most thorough reviews of digital cameras (yes, even more thorough than the ones on my own site), but also has an ongoing forum that’s useful for getting answers to tough questions (select Nikon D70 from the Forums pop­ up in the left navigation panel). • Rob Galbraith http://www.robgalbraith.com has developed a reputation in the digital photojournalism world for some of the most articulate and detailed explanations of professional digital camera use. Again, an active forum helps get answers to common problems (select Forums in upper left navigation panel and then the Nikon D2H, D1/X/H, D100 and D70 link in the forums). Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the D70 Page 3 About this eBook This eBook was created using Adobe Acrobat 6.0 directly from my original files. I’ve tried to retain as many of the navigational features that Acrobat allows (for example, the Bookmarks section at the left is derived from the Table of Contents and is fully active—click on an entry and you’ll be taken to it). Curiously, trying to create a fully functional eBook using the current iteration of Adobe’s tools is worthy of an eBook itself (most of the chapters would be centered on trying to get promised features to work). I grant you specific permission to print or have printed by a third party a single copy of this eBook for your own private use. You may not resell that printed copy, but must destroy it if you sell or pass on the original eBook you received to someone else. Do not print a copy if you don’t agree with the previous sentence. In addition, I grant you specific permission to create a backup copy of this eBook for your own private use. However, note that you must destroy that backup copy and any other copies you have of this work, printed or electronic, if you sell or pass on the original eBook you received. It is a violation of Copyright law to sell copies of this work. In order to fully protect my property rights, I must pursue any violations that come to my attention. Since any such sale would be considered deliberate on your part, be aware that US law allows up to $150,000 per act in punitive damages to be assessed.1 If you’d like a hard copy of the eBook, you can print a copy for your personal use by selecting PRINT from the FILE menu. It’s possible to print on both sides of the paper and get 1 I really hate having to be so specific about your rights and mine. But I’ve identified several cases where people were copying and selling my work in competition with me. I don’t know about you, but I find that morally unacceptable. This is my livelihood; I must protect it. Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the D70 Page 4 a real book-like experience by using the Print: Odd Pages Only and Print: Even Pages Only options on the Print dialog, but I don’t recommend this unless you’re good at keeping track of paper, know how to properly re-orient the paper for the second pass, and are sure that your printer won’t choke on a page somewhere. Since there are so many printers available and their dialog boxes all allow different printing options, I can’t help you figure out the most economical or convenient way to print your eBook2. Yes, it even took me a few minutes to figure out how to create front and back copies on my laser printer, so I know it’s a hassle. Take the resulting printouts to your copy shop, have them trim the edges (the final page size is 5.5 x 8.5” unless you’ve let Acrobat rescale the book to fit the full page) and bind. If you’re really the type that doesn’t like to struggle through the paper handling idiosyncrasies of your printer, most Kinko’s and similar copy shops can print, collate, and bind a nice portable version of this book for you (show them the statement on the back cover or on the previous page if they balk at printing a Copyrighted work). Make sure they know that the final page size is 5.5” x 8.5”. Note: Kinko’s and other copy shops should actually refuse to make a copy of this eBook, as it is protected by Copyright. Show them the back cover of the eBook case, my Web page for the eBook, or the sentence a few paragraphs back where I grant you permission to print or have printed a copy for your personal use. If that doesn’t work, have them email me at [email protected] to verify that this is okay. 2 Since I get the occasional question as to why I don’t publish a paper version, I’ll explain: paper versions not only turn out to be more expensive to produce in the small quantities at which a niche publication like this sells, but they also introduce the problems associated with inventory. Producing this eBook electronically allows me to create it on demand, reducing waste and cost, and to keep it up to date as I learn new things about the camera. It also gives me a chance to correct the inevitable minor typos that somehow creep into every major production. On that last point: I keep a current errata list on my Web site. You’ll find the one for this eBook at http://www.bythom.com/d70guideerrata.htm. Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the D70 Page 5 If you encounter a copy shop that doesn’t ask you to show permission to reproduce a copyrighted work, or one that still refuses after being shown permission, I’d like to hear about it. If the former and the copy shop is a chain, it is probably violating direct court orders that mandate that they don’t do this. I’ve not put Digital Rights Management on this file to block all copying and printing, because it’s a hassle for the user. So, please respect my rights and help report those that willingly violate them. Note: Some Kinko’s now use a special piece of software to print from PDF files, such as the one for this eBook. Since that software first attempts to extract all text from the file and I have selected to block text extraction in Acrobat, this means that such software fails to work with this eBook. They can still print it by simply running Acrobat, but this limits some of the fancier options they can do. If you experience any problems with this eBook, first check to make sure that you’re using version 5.0 or later of Acrobat Reader. If you continue to have problems, please don’t hesitate to write to me at [email protected]. Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the D70 Page 6 Note on the First Edition While this is a first edition, the D70 is enough like the D100 that I’ve been able to re-purpose and rewrite portions of my D100 eBook, which means that much of the information here has been thoroughly vetted.