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Buy it. No need to say more.
This book has smoothed the way for the switch, and I can't speak highly enough of it. I started learning photography 25 years ago, and have spent 15 years as a travel writer/photographer based in Hong Kong, I have only in the past few weeks made the transition to a digital SLR, as I was sceptical about digital cameras over film SLRs.
Complete Digital Photography is absolutely thorough, and makes a complex subject easy to understand. There are many books on photography out there that are superficial - great covers masking a lack of substance.
That is why I check out the Amazon book reviews before making a decision on which one to buy. The reviewers have said it already.
You won't be disappointed.
I just upgraded my camera and got this book to give me a little more knowledge of digital photography, and I found it to be a very useful teaching tool. It is complete, covering all the topics I wanted to learn. I was able to browse through and study just those things I needed help with, and then go back to my camera and use its features more effectively. Thank you Ben Long.
I graduated in photography in 93, just before digital was considered serious photography, unless you wanted to spend $ 13,000 on a less than a megapixel camera. But this should be digital photo 101 for old school photographers and semi-pro enthusiasts.The exercise CD was a great help, especially when I needed to learn more about ps curves and masks, things that I barely used before (used to do it by hand), since when I was in school we had photoshop 3.0, I had a lot of tricks to learn. Although it has explanations that are for true beginners, I still had things to learn.
I used digital for many jobs, but film was still the top choice.When I decided to upgrade my camera and software, I found that I was behind on both accounts, and needed an information source that would make me understand digital as close to what I know about the film process. I was a film photographer in a digital world, doing things the hard way, and not knowing it.For film photographers needing to upgrade, and for beginners this is a MUST, even if some of the basic information is not new, the way we do it now is. I had a view camera and a decent 35 mm and a canon D60 second generation camera.
But when it came to digital workflow and photoshop CS3 resources, it made me realize how many hours I had lost in post processing doing things using older versions of photoshop, and missing out in many features that did the work for me, it made me regret not buying it sooner, it now saves me 70% of the time I used to take from organizing to processing and preparing the photos for their different outputs. This book was the link I needed.For photographers coming from film and still not so sure about digital, (sometimes, but fewer and fewer times, film beats digital, but not by as much as a film photographer thinks anymore). This book was a great source to understand the digital process as well as I understood film.
You will need more books after this one, sometimes more technical ones, sometimes to detail newer techniques (like HDR photography). Great job Ben, I will look more carefully at all your books, this one "hit the spot" for me.
Good book. Lots of useful information. Up to date on latest technology. I've only read the first three chapters so far, but have already learned a lot.
If I were to give an accurate description for this book, I'd say it's an author getting paid to try and sell an uneducated person some manner of digital camera. The author doesn't go into important aspects of digital photography that any photographer should learn. Over half of this book is garbage. The most use I'll actually get out of this book is by using it for fire fuel to heat myself in the winter. There's not enough information on ISOs, it doesn't explain the combination of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO in relation to the photograph being taken. There are spelling and grammatical errors strewn throughout the book, and it's not organized in a manner that will really help anyone take better photos. For anyone that would like to learn the basics of photography, be they film or digital, I would recommend Henry Horenstein's Black and White Photography or anything written by Ansel Adams. Another useful tool for amateur and professional photographers alike is Ken Rockwell's web site on how to take great photos at http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech.htm.
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