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| Book: | The Digital Photography Companion | |
| Subject: | An excellent introduction | |
| Date: | 2008-09-11 19:24:06 | |
| From: | Pim Borman | |
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Even simple point-and-shoot digital cameras offer manual control over parameters such as aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity that can turn snapshots into great photos. When you graduate to a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera you have wasted your money unless you know how to make the best use of its sophisticated controls. This concise book does an excellent introductory job. The first 2 chapters describe and explain the many features of most cameras and how to use them. They made me aware of many controls that I didn't understand before. Chapter 3 is the most valuable part of the book. It shows how to take good pictures under a wide variety of conditions, such as portraits, group shots, kids, landscapes, sports events, museums were no flash is allowed, and architecture. It mentions many tricks of the trade to get better results, such as using sunglasses as a polarizing filter, extending the dynamic range (light-dark contrast), using pantyhose as a diffusion filter, and using your reflecting car windshield cover as a reflector to lighten shadows on a sunny day. Chapter 4 discusses what you can do after you took the pictures, such as emailing them, editing with various software applications, recovering photos from an erased memory card, and more. The final chapter briefly discusses printing options. A brief discussion of the optics of photo taking explaining how focal length and aperture affect width and depth of field would have been useful for better understanding. The Appendix has a quick reference guide for a variety of camera settings. You may want to make a copy of those pages and carry it around in your camera bag. I learned a lot from this small book and strongly recommend it as an introduction to better photography. |
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