The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby
|
List Price: Our Price: $13.49 You Save: $11.50 (46%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.99 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Digital Photography Book
Book Review: A valuable book that is an excellent value
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently purchased a very nice digital camera for work. The one we had before was good for taking photos of our students for the roster, but every photo I shot of a live speaker or group events was just pitiful. So we popped for a Canon EOS Rebel XT and I figured I'd better learn how to use it. After all, what good is the investment if I still take lousy photos with it?
Scott Kelby's The Digital Photography Book is every bit as straight and to the point as its title. Well let me qualify that slightly. While Kelby does get to the point, he doesn't do it with a straight face. His writing is infused with a sense of humor that worked well with me. I wasn't sure what to expect when I got this book. I just knew that I had a knack for taking ho-hum photos, digital or otherwise, and any instruction had to help. I guess I expected a lot of "use this kind of lighting" and "set your f-stop at..." sorts of advice. There are those kinds of tips to be sure, but there are also an amazing number of forehead-slappingly simple things and insider insights that make a world of difference.
Kelby jumps right into the basics of how to get "tack sharp" photos, reasoning that "If your photos aren't sharp, the rest doesn't matter." He starts out with the equipment you need over and above your camera to get the kind of shots you want - tripod, ball head, cable release, level, etc. I'm sure that will have many of you reaching to protect your wallet, but have no fear. In many cases he gives alternatives that you can use in a pinch. Granted, he generally represents them as what to do when you are caught without all your equipment, but they can also be considered low-cost alternatives. In most cases when he suggests new hardware he is very specific about brand and models he would recommend at various price ranges. I found this very helpful. It's one thing for someone to tell me to buy a tripod, but have you ever gone looking for one? Not only are the choices overwhelming, but the number of ways you can configure them are as well. Kelby makes it much simpler.
After laying out the ground rules for equipment, settings and terminology he jumps right into a series of practical chapters such as Shooting Flowers Like a Pro, Shooting Weddings Like a Pro, Shooting Sports Like a Pro and more. He has chapters which deal with some of the problems and advantages unique to digital cameras and digital photography. Did you know you should bring extra batteries when you are shooting in colder weather? I didn't. He wraps up the book with two very useful chapters - How to Print Like a Pro and Other Cool Stuff and Photo Recipes to Help You Get "The Shot". The latter is just one shot scenario after another with the keys to making it work.
Since I am such a novice I didn't know what I was looking for when I picked this book up other than tips on how to take better shots with my digital camera. After reading it I fell like I got hit with a Mack Truck full of tips. Lucky for me, I did get the number of the truck that hit me. It is "Scott Kelby" and I recommend stepping into his path as soon as you can!
Book Review: A Good Book That Begins Beyond the Basics
Summary: 5 Stars
Since I'm offering an opinion (and review) on the book, The Digital Photography Book, I think a brief look at my background may give what follows a bit more veracity. I am an enthusiastic advanced amateur photographer with roughly 40 years of experience that includes a goodly number of awards and published photos. I shut down my wet darkroom a few years ago and have happily traded film and silver-based images for electrons, pixels and ink jet printing.
Enough about me; now let's look at the latest book by Scott Kelby (of National Association of Photoshop Professionals fame): The Digital Photography Book.
This is a different kind of animal in the world of self-help photography books. The author describes the experience of reading the book as having your good friend--who also happens to be an expert in digital photography--standing besides you while you're taking pictures.
The book lives up to Scott's description--complete with the frequent interjection of his quirky sense of humor. (Warning, watch out for the first page of Chapter One.)
I don't feel this is a book for complete novices--either in photography or in the use of digital equipment. Scott assumes the readers already know the basics of how their cameras work (what and where the controls are) and have used their cameras long enough to know what else they want to learn to take better photographs.
Another reason some basic knowledge of photography is necessary to get the most from this book is that Scott doesn't shy away from including the terms in common use by digital photographers today: ISO, white balance, focal length, lens aperture, etc. He also assumes the readers have the desire to move up in the ranks from point-and-shooters to at least competent amateurs. Therefore, Scott includes numerous suggestions about photographic gear he feels can help any photographer take better pictures--and, although he breaks his suggestions down by price range, much of the gear still comes with a hefty price tag.
A look at the chapter titles also confirms that Scott was not writing a teach-everything book for all readers. The 11 chapters include specialized topics, such as, Shooting Flowers like a Pro, Shooting Weddings Like a Pro, Shooting Sports Like a Pro and Taking Advantage of Digital Like a Pro. For me, the final chapter, Photo Recipes to Help You Get "The Shot", was the best part of the book. This is where Scott puts everything together and takes his readers into the field to practice what they've learned.
So, do I like The Digital Photography Book? More importantly, do I recommend it? Yes, to both of these questions; but, as I mentioned above, to get the most out of the book, the reader should have at least point-and-shoot digital experience and a basic vocabulary of photographic terms.
One final note. The book can be read front to back, or chapters can be sampled at random to learn just the techniques each reader needs. At the offered price, I think The Digital Photography Book definitely has a place in a well-rounded photographer's library.
Book Review: This is a great results-oriented book.
Summary: 5 Stars
As Scott Kelby himself says on the back cover of this book, his approach is to share how-to tips as if you were out with him on a photo shoot. The approach is very accessible and easy to follow. I've read a few other books that were very helpful in terms of creating a good composition, getting a "creative" exposure, but Scott's book really helped me with some nagging questions I've had. For example, I got into digital photography so that I could photograph my kids' sporting events to take better portraits. I've always wondered how to get better sports pictures in low light and his section on shooting sports gave me the answers I needed and identified a "sweet spot" shutter speed and optimal ISO settings. Also, in a section on "Avoiding Problems like the Pros" he provides important tips such as the fact that batteries have shorter lives in cool weather, or how to change your lens and avoid dust, or other reasons the pros use lens hoods.
I've been very curious about the use of RAW format, but didn't know the first thing about what is possible in terms of post-shot processing with RAW vs. JPEG formats. I've been shooting in JPEG-Fine for quite some time, and I've been running into some problems with my shots related to over/under exposure with limited options for fixing the problem with my current software. Scott talks quite a bit about what you can do in Photoshop and I found it very intriguing. He didn't get into the how-to details surrounding Photoshop in this book, but he did get me interested in it by showing some great effects created in Photoshop. In fact, I've decided to buy Photoshop Elements 5.0 (better for a newbie like me...) and his step by step book on the product (The Photoshop Elements 5 Book for Digital Photographers - Scott Kelby) because his book appears to have the same no nonsense, tell it to me straight, type of approach that I liked so much in this book - at least that's what the reviewers are saying...
Scott also has a great section at the back of the book entitled "Photo Recipes to Help You Get 'The Shot'" where he'll show a particular type of photo effect, such as single subject shot of a flower, portrait with soft directional light and natural skin tones, or smooth and silky water and dramatic skies in a landscape shot, and tell you step by step what you need to do to replicate the exact shot demonstrating the affect on that page. It's really great and it's given me some ideas on things I'd like to try. For example, I want to try playing with slower shutter speeds for more dramatic movement shots necessary to capture people dancing, or a band playing a concert. He shows how to do this in the book.
Scott also has a great sense of humor. I won't spoil any of his jokes, but in addition to giving you some great advice on photography, the book is an enjoyable read.
Book Review: New to Digital Photography? This One's for You!
Summary: 5 Stars
Kelby's book is a great start if you are new to the world of digital photography. The book is divided into topical sections which covers each of the major issues surrounding photography in general and digital photography in specific. This book is not a lengthy technical exposition of optics and camera hardware; rather, it is a hands-on guide that helps us both compose and capture the best photographs we can from even our sometimes diminutive and inexpensive cameras.
Although the book is aimed at novices, there are some nice tricks and tips that even seasoned photographers may not have considered. But its main audience is the novice or mid-range user who simply wants to make sense out of the process photographers use to take great photographs. For example, we learn about aperture, shutter speed, and exposure, and how these three are related on to another. But more importantly, we learn what effect CHANGING aperture and/or shutter speed will have on the resulting photo. We learn about how to take sharp, crisply-focused photos, and what it means to say a photo is "tack sharp." We learn about some basic and inexpensive add-on hardware that can completely alter the quality of most any digital camera (some costing as little as three dollars), and as a person who as actually tried most of these suggestions, I can say that knowing and learning these things really can move your photos into an area of quality that is surprisingly good. Kelby's suggestions are born out of years of experience, and his ability to explain exactly what does and doesn't work is clearly demonstrated on most every page.
The introduction of digital technology to the analog camera has revolutionized how we view and take photographs. I, for one, could never get "into" photography while it was in its film variant, the process being too cumbersome and intricate (and expensive) for me to wish to pursue it to any degree. When Sony introduced the CCD sensor in the mid 1990's and made digital photography available for the average guy, I, like millions of others, started experimenting with photography for the first time. That means that there are millions of people walking around with relatively sophisticated digital cameras who don't know a whit about how to leverage them to take the best photographs. Kelby's book admirably fits the bill for those people, demystifying the process of simple composition, explaining basic concepts and controls, and then giving us those added tips and tricks that can really serve well on photographing expositions. To boot, the book is beautifully illustrated with full-color photographs and is reasonably priced. Use this book as a stepping stone into the larger world of photography. You might be surprised just how good a result you can achieve with a sub $200 camera using some of these useful strategies.
Book Review: A great book
Summary: 5 Stars
I've always been a "dabbler" in photography but 6 months ago I decided to take it a bit more seriously and treat myself to a Digital SLR. This will be my second photography book, the first being the "Nikon D40 Field Guide".
I really liked this guess you want to know why?
This book is a great "wide and general" book. The way it is written is as a series of recipies/advice on how you would shoot a particular shot. It is grouped together into logical chapters: weddings, sports, portrait, landscape. Each is a page long and focuses on one specific thing. The style is supposed to be as if you had asked a specific question: "how do I do....XXXXX". You get the answer. There's a drawback to that which I'll come back to.
To me, that is a great way to layout the book. You can - as I have just done - read through the whole book and pick things up. Then later on, when you have that specific question you can come back to 1 page rather than have to search through the whole book.
As I said, I'm an enthusiastic amateur. The book is certainly written in an amateur style - there's no myriad of complicated ackronyms or goobildygook. I certainly picked up a lot of good information from the book.
Things to note or beware of:
A lot has been written about Scott's writing style and humor (or lack of). Personally i didn't mind it. I didn't find it insulting at all. To me it seems like he's trying to breakdown the barrier of the super-elite techno geek - which no doubt he could be given his extensive experience. Apart from the first chapter it's not that prevalent: if you read Brien's review that's practically all of it that he's pulled out.
The main criticism for some will be that he doesn't explain in this book WHY you do X, Y or Z. I understand that criticism and it's true, but that would make for a much longer book. This book aims to give you a little bit of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects.
In my mind you need to balance this book out with 2 others: 1 book that is specific to what your camera can do (like the D40 field guide above) & 2 an uber-techie book explaining exposure.
The book is general and may focus on areas you aren't that interested in. The wedding photo section, or shooting flowers section or the sports section (where he starts by saying you'll need $$$$$$'s of gear to do sports well) will not be of interest to everyone. However it's still good to read those sections and understand a little bit more about photography.
This book is only 1 tool in your photographic arsenal. IMHO it does that job very well.