Customer Reviews

The Complete Guide to Night & Lowlight Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book)

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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really, truly wanted to love this book. I wanted to recommend it to my students, and I wanted it to finally be a useful Night Photography textbook. Unfortunately, it falls tremendously short of its potential on so many levels. As someone who has photographed at night for over 20 years, and taught Night Photography classes and workshops for 10 years, I feel qualified to make this judgment. The first and most obvious shortcoming is in the lack of inspiring, or even good Night Photographs. Most of the examples included are not only NOT night or low light images, but they are simply illustrations for the page, and not particularly good or interesting photographs. What a way to lose your audience in the first chapter.

To be fair, there is plenty of useful technical information, but it is generally not very well organized. (The first thing covered in the text is purple fringing and chromatic aberration!) Unfortunately, much of the information presented, while well researched and generally correct, is not really specific to the topic of the book.

Probably the greatest flaw of this book is that it does not embrace Night Photography for what it is. The author seems to have no grasp whatsoever of what it is that makes Night Photography special. In a nutshell, Night Photography is about the accumulation of time and light in an image- be it film or digital, and the way that the camera can record time in ways that the eye cannot see at night. Rather than show readers how to take advantage of the magic possible with long exposures and dramatic mixed lighting sources found at night, Freeman instructs the reader how to overcome these "challenges". Night photography is unpredictable and to a certain extent uncontrollable, and rather than embrace these things that make it unique, Freeman does everything he can to help his reader eliminate any and all risks. Night photography that "stays inside the lines" is boring. It is only by breaking the rules that Night Photographers create really exciting images, and there isn't more than a couple in this entire book. Imagine a 225 page book on Night Photography that devotes exactly THREE PARAGRAPHS to photographing by moonlight, and has zero examples of photographs taken by moonlight! There is also no chapter on light painting, which is another large omission.

There are at least a dozen books on the market supposedly about Night and low light photography, and they pretty much all focus on the "Low Light" part of the equation-Christmas lights, neon signs, fireworks, theatre or sporting events at night. This is not Night Photography, but simply how to extend daytime shooting methods into low light situations. Michael Freeman's disappointing book is just another one added to the pile. To date, Andrew Sanderson's "Night Photography" is the best text published on the subject, but it is almost entirely a black and white film book, and therefore of limited use in today's digital world. I'm sure that many people will find something useful in Freeman's book, and some will disagree with my assessment. In the end, it simply does not inspire the reader to go out and photograph at night, either with the text or especially the illustrations. It is certainly not for the novice.

The resource section in the back of the book lists only Freeman's other books, and none of the other published materials on Night and Low Light photography. His list of websites does not include links to any Night Photography sites or resources, most particularly www.thenocturnes.com, which is the undisputed champion of Night Photography online resources. He also offers no resources for classes or workshops on the subject, of which there are several, both in the US and abroad. There is a strong sense of community and sharing amongst Night Photographers, supported by both online and real world resources like The Nocturnes, local meet ups, and Flickr. Freeman is clearly not in touch with this community, which to me explains to a large degree why this book fails to hit the mark. As I said earlier in the review, there is a lot of useful technical information in this book, but it has no heart or soul.

Jill Waterman's new book, "Night and Low Light Photography, Professional Techniques from Experts for Artistic and Commercial Success" is much better than this, or any other book released on the topic to date. (disclaimer: I am a minor contributor to Jill's book, with no financial interest) Night and Low-Light Photography: Professional Techniques from Experts for Artistic and Commercial Success

Not what I expected. I thought that there would be much more emphasis and discussion on how to TAKE acceptable photos in a low light environment. This book says. in esssence, to take repeated photos with the camera set at low ISO, wide apperture and slow shutter and then fix the botched result back home using well described photo software programs. I take many photos at night with limited success and thought that it might be worth 20 bucks to improve my average - it wasn't. If photo image manipulation had been my goal, this book provides a good detailed explanation of several programs and I would have rated it four stars.

It's good for Michael Freeman that I decided a while ago that I would not hold it against a book if the content did not match the title. Otherwise this book would have to be called "The Complete Guide to Wide Apertures, Slow Shutter Speeds, and High ISO's".

That's because rather than concentrating on the usual stuff like metering on the sky at dusk or setting up flash units, Freeman assumes that the reader understands exposure and most post-processing and instead concentrates on what can be done to mitigate the consequences of wide apertures, slow shutter speeds and high ISO's.

After a general introduction dealing with the nature of sensors, noise and similar topics, he divides the book into two sections that at first appear idiosyncratic: hand held and locked down. Primarily he does this because he says the ways of correcting for the problems created using the two different methods are due to exposure setup. Hand held requires wide apertures and high ISOs while tripod shooting uses long exposures and these require different corrective measures in post processing. Each section first indicates methods of mitigation (steadying techniques, tripod management) and then discusses post processing, which is the meat of the book. For example, in discussing hand held shots, he points out that camera movement is a source of blur and that software tools can be used to correct for this. Freeman also has an extensive discussion of high dynamic range processing that is similar to his recent book on this topic, although the use of HDR for handheld photography is a subject not often encountered.

I hesitate to describe a text as aimed at advanced photographers since the definition of an advanced photographer depends on the individual doing the defining, but I can certainly say that this is not a book for novices. Most of the post-processing techniques offered require a thorough knowledge of image processing software, the devotion of time to handcraft an image, and occasionally the use of software above and beyond Photoshop. Moreover, to apply Freeman's suggestions, I had to sit with the book in hand and follow his procedures step by step on my own images. But the techniques Freeman offered were certainly worth the investment of my time to study, and hopefully, to apply in a low light situation.

(Freeman appeared to be using an older version of Adobe Camera Raw in some of his examples that did not include the new input sharpening facility which works in tandem with ACR's noise reduction and I wondered if there were some advantages in processing low-light images with the newer software. Hopefully he'll answer that in another book.)

The more skilled one becomes as a photographer, the harder it is to find useful advice that one has never encountered. For many skilled photographers, this book may prove useful.

This book is focusing on the technicalities of lowlight photography. There will be nothing on composition and tricks/ideas of how to take good night photos. For the technical points the book is pretty good.

I just bought my first DSLR camera. I bought ten photography books on amazon. I'm evaluating these books from the perspective of a semi-advanced amateur.

Michael Freeman's approach to night and lowlight digital photography will offend, irritate or confuse those carrying over what they learned about photography with film.

Freeman's emphasis seems to be on shoot first - and then correct later.

In fact, the bulk of the book seems to be about post-processing in Photoshop or other image manipulation applications.

The truth is that film photographers often overlook or forget all the post-processing techniques that went into producing the "perfect" shots of yesterday - or what defects were forgiven. Dodging, burning in, rubbing hard on spots in the print, all those wonderful darkroom tricks have been replaced by a new generation of tricks.

Freeman provides a pretty good introduction to all these techniques, such as blending several exposures into one "perfect" shot. He also spends way too much time and space on equipment choice, but that is a quibble.

Overall, this is a good overview of basic night and lowlight photography. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a "treatise" on the subject. It absolutely is not for the film photographer. It introduces photographers ranging from beginner to advanced hobbyist to camera and post-processing techniques necessary for this specialized kind of photography. For what it is, it is good. Not truly "the complete guide", but a decent start.

Jerry

I own several of Freeman's books. I found both "Mastering Black & White Digital Photography" and (especially) "The Photographer's Eye" to be quite useful, well written, and thoughtfully laid out.

I can't say the same for "The Complete Guide to Night and Lowlight Photography". The title is misleading to say the least; the book is almost entirely devoid of guidance on image capture, focusing instead on post-capture techniques in Photoshop.

As useful as Photoshop is, I would much rather get an excellent image and tweak it post-capture than have to recover a mediocre capture. This book will provide no help with the former.

A very technical introduction to DSLR low light photography, but don't let that discourage you. This book is less about the effects and more about the nuts and bolts of how your sensor behaves in poorly lit situations: where does the ISO noise come from, how do you recover those details in shadows, what is the premise behind HDR, etc.

The author also spends a lot of time on the post-processing steps of your digital photos - from importing photos to evaluating noise reduction plugins to Photoshop. Having skipped the film photography step and gone directly to digital, this book made me appreciate all the tools and possibilities that are now available to every amateur.

Highly recommended, especially if you really want to understand how your camera works from the inside.

I have enjoyed Mr. Freeman's other books and thought this would be a great addition. There is a lot more about post processing of images using a variety of software, most of which are now outdated as the book was published in 2008.

Yes, you heard me correctly. Save your money. Go to your local community college. Enroll in a photography class.

Unlike many of the critical reviews I have nothing particularly against this book. The problem is that as I read it, I realized that I was already familiar with most of the tips covered in the book.

That's not all. I recently went to my local bookstore with the idea of finding a good book to expand my photography skills. I looked at photography books on landscapes, light and lighting, portraits, capturing light for beginners, and nature photography. I couldn't find a book that was helpful.

Don't get me wrong. I do not claim to be a good photographer. I am plenty willing to pay good money for a book that will specialize in a particular aspect of photography. Here's what happened with me. Last year I went to my community college and plopped down $20 for a two-night class on basic digital photography with point and shoot cameras. That class taught me lots of composition tricks. Several months later I plopped down another $20 for a two-night class on digital DSLR photography. There I learned a lot more. A few months later my community college offered (you guessed it) a third class on advanced techniques, followed by a fourth class on processing, using computer programs. For the price of $80 I was able to have 8 sessions in a small group setting with a professional photographer. But that wasn't all, in between all of those sessions the professional photographer accepted our shots, through email, touched them up, and told us how to improve. It was like having a photography tutor for a year. Now, after the year is up, we are still friends and he still offers advice for free.

I do not want to be negative on photography "how to" books, but nearly everyone is near a community college these days. This is where you get a lot of bang for the buck. Then you can spend your money on more advanced level photography books.

This came to me in brand new condition. It took almost a week and a half to get to me, but still with in the time they predicted.