Customer Reviews

Digital Landscape Photography

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For those who want to learn the basics of landscape photography, this is the perfect book.

The authors have not just assembled all the information necessary for a new digital photographer to produce good landscape photography. The authors present it clearly, simply and lucidly so the readers will have no difficulty understanding the lessons. Moreover, they have organized the information on each topic so that even if the reader has missed a point earlier in the book, he will be reminded again further on.

The ten chapters in the book cover necessary equipment, exposure, sharp focusing, the effect of light, and composition. There is a chapter on special subjects that covers techniques that range from photographing from a kayak to making images of fall foliage. There are even two chapters on the newest darlings of the landscape set, high dynamic range photography (HDR) and panoramas. The book is nicely illustrated with the authors' photographs.

The chapter on exposure is typical of the book. After explaining the factors of aperture, shutter speed and media sensitivity, the authors show how their interrelationship leads to a good exposure. The authors then show how to use the tools of the digital camera, like the histogram and the "blinkies" to get the exposure the photographer wants. Once having laid out these techniques, the Gerlachs reemphasize them throughout the book so that the new landscape photographer grasps the many factors that lead to a good photograph.

The chapters on HDR and panoramas, which are items that serious landscape photographers will eventually want to try, are not comprehensive descriptions of how to use these tools but rather tell just enough so that the reader can realize their potential and not be intimidated by their apparently complex procedures.

I suppose I could disagree with a few of their recommendations, like the details on the use of back-button focusing for landscapes, but the authors are clear in indicating that these are matters of preference, and indicate other methods of accomplishing the same tasks. On the other hand, they did inspire me to reconsider some techniques that I have generally not employed.

The book has little about post processing, except with regard to HDR and panoramas, and this helps to keep the book simple. Photographers who hope to master landscape photography will have to learn these skills as well. I've talked about new landscape photographers, and I expect that advanced landscape photographers are not likely to find techniques they did not know. On the other hand, there are plenty of photographers who have tried their hand at scenery images, and who have been less then successful. For these folks, this is an ideal book.

The book is wonderful, the two authors spend most of their time discussing how to take excellent images in the field, rather than wasting too much time on hardware (one chapter) or digital post-processing (two chapters dealing with HDR and panoramas).
The rest deals with exposure, how to obtain sharp images, light conditions, composition etc. I like the author's style, stating their preferences where they think they matter and discussing the options where the personal needs or preferences of the individual photographer have to be considered. The book is illustrated with many superb images throughout.
What is not superb, however, is the overall print quality. On many pages the text is either faded or has a bluish tinge, making reading in low light difficult. That detracts from an otherwise excellent book.

Still an excellent purchase - one of my favorite books right now.

This book sets the standard for digital landscape photography. The serious reader will learn three fundamental concepts that will vastly improve his or her images. The first is the use of the RGB histogram, requiring the photographer to move the color channel that is farthest to the right without clipping. This technique produces perfectly exposed highlights and avoids potentially serious problems caused by working with the camera's large luminous histogram.

The second technique is back-button focusing, a term coined by the Gerlachs, and a technique which they have used for years. This technique enables the photographer working on a tripod to focus on an important subject in the frame, recompose the image, and take the shot without losing the original focus. This technique will be of enormous benefit for obtaining sharp focus on the critical element in the frame.

The third technique is using manual exposure, which avoids, among other things, the problem caused by light coming through the viewfinder and thereby altering the camera's meter and causing underexposure. Manual exposure is a foolproof method for avoiding this problem and is to be preferred to autoexposure in most circumstances.

There is a great deal more in the book than the three techniques mentioned above, and the book is rich in additional information for the digital landscape photographer. However, I believe that adopting these three techniques alone will produce an enormous improvement in one's landscape photography. The Gerlachs are to be congratulated for producing such an important book that I believe will become a classic in photography.

I have read two very similar photography books both published in 2010 by Focal Press.
Strangely enough, both have the same title: Digital Landscape Photography.
The one, also reviewed here, by Michael Frye has a subtitle "In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters" to help differentiate them.
I have read the two books one after the other and I can not help comparing them.

Both are meant to be read by beginners and provide info on aperture values, shutter speeds, ISO values etc..
Gerlachs' book is longer and bigger with more text (and info!).

If you are accustomed to digital SLR cameras and call yourself an advanced amateur, you are unlikely to find much new information in any of them.
If you have just bought your first DSLR with the kit lens, you may find these books worthy of attention.
They both offer beautiful landscape images and some sound advice accompanying them.
Frye's book offer more software tips; if you are not familiar with the basic operations (levels, curves etc.) it may serve you better.
If, on the other hand, you think you want to know more down to earth (literally) advice on finding & selecting a location and need more advice on the use of a DSLR camera in the field, Gerlachs' book offers a lot more. Here, a great variety of landscape shooting scenarios are handled in detail.
This probably reflects the authors' experience with workshops.

The authors admit they have their own preferences and freely quote their equipments throughout the book.
I have just disregarded some of those comments as my equipment is different and at least as capable ;)

There is nothing wrong if you buy both of these books. However, their content overlaps significantly and they both use repetitions freely to stress the basics.
If you think you can buy just one of them, Gerlachs' book offers more scope and info. It is also organized better.
HDR and exposure blending techniques as well as panoramas are handled in a more detailed fashion here.

The image and paper quality is very good. However, as was pointed out by another viewer, the text is printed gray for some aesthetic reason that escapes me.

Certainly, this is a good book on "digital landscape photography" for a beginner.

Loved this book especially the section about using the histogram as your meter. I used to use a hand-held meter but no more. The use of the RGB histogram and highlight alert was worth the price of this book. I use live view on my Canon and the authors metering advice. Now for my money saving advice from this book. I have a Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lens. I have had trouble with the focus for years. The images were always blurry. I was going to spend another $300. to have it re-calibrated by Canon. This expensive lens sat on my shelf for a long time gathering dust. The authors warned about using a filter as protection for your lens as it will affect the final image . Well after smacking my head, I decided to remove the UV filter from the zoom lens and try it again. My images are now in focus and (thanks to the hint of using the RGB histograms) are beautiful! I have a brand new lens to enjoy thanks to this book. I highly recommend this book.

the authors sound like really nice people and are obviously incredible photographers, but i was hoping for a bit of a quicker pace and more info than just the obvious beginner stuff. would be a great book for beginners. there are TONS of spelling, grammatical, and formatting errors.

I just bought this, their second book, and am having a difficult time putting it down. Books on photography are a dime a dozen but after reading their first book I have had the unique opportunity to have attended several of their workshops and both John and Barbara are excellent teachers and this is more than obvious in their style and approach to photography. I always learn something new from them. This book is packed full of new and interesting techniques, as well as their photography, that will make you a better photographer and that has always been their goal. I look forward to their next effort!

Along with Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Masters this book is all you will need to improve your landscape photography.
Reader will find advices from selecting equipment to little tricks how to take pictures from canoe or small fishing boat. Pictures throughout the book are explained in detail and as such are great examples and inspirations.

Give good examples of what can be done with both Canon and Nikon eq. since the couple shoots with either. Some good nuggets to mine here, good pics with descriptions go well together.

If I could give this book 3 1/2 stars, I probably would. This book is definitely better than your average photography book, but it falls short of being something that really stands out for me.

The title of this book suggests that the focus of this book is on landscape photography, but there are only a few sections really specific to shooting landscapes. Instead, this book contains a lot of pretty good information about digital photography in general, and is mostly suitable for the novice photographer.

First the highlights: there is a good breadth of coverage of technical information related to digital photography in this book. Few books I have read covered so many different topics. The writing is straight-forward and easy to understand, and there are some very nice images in this book. It's also nice to read a book that's fairly up-to-date with current technology, so the information feels very relevant to today's digital photographers. Some information (like how the histogram works, and why it's not entirely accurate) is presented quite well. I also did learn some interesting tips, like what "back button focusing" is (their own term, but a useful technique for a common problem).

On the other hand, the organization of this book could be better, and there are some real gaps in some of the explanations that can be very confusing for the beginner. The biggest of these problems (which happens over and over in this book), is that the authors frequently "forward reference" topics (e.g. use terminology that is not explained until later in the book, or sometimes not at all!). These topics would make perfect sense if you already knew what the authors were talking about, but they would be very puzzling otheriwse. A few examples include reciprocity, exposure compensation, diffraction, "fast" lenses, ND filters, flash compensation, and many others. In fact, flash compensation is mentioned a few times, but the authors never describe flash in any detail (so unless you understand flash exposure vs. ambient light exposure, you'll probably just be left guessing).

I also think that a lot of technical topics could benefit from more examples and explanation. For example, depth of field is really not described well at all. There's discussion of "fast" lenses--which is explained chapters after the term has been used--but there aren't good examples of this so the reader can compare the creative differences. On that topic, I found it odd to describe the basics of the photographic triangle (iso/aperture/shutter speed) so far into the book--after lenses, filters, and camera functions are described. The relationship also isn't describe in a way that really "pops", either. It feels very dry and overly technical. This section would have benefited from more images. Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Exposure" does much better here, even though I would say there's more technical information presented in this book.

There are other gaps in explanations as well. The authors do a good job recommending "exposing to the right", and they harp on this topic several times. Unfortunately, the explanation of why you should do this was a bit lacking. There are good technical reasons for this (read Barnbaum's "The Art of Photography" for more), but without this background, it's hard to internalize the information.

The section on composition was really terse and filled with generic advice. I feel this could be skipped altogether in this book because there wasn't much useful here. Get a dedicated book on composition if that's what you want to learn. On that note, I'll also mention that although there are some really nice pictures, the book also has a fair share of images that are really dull and uninspired. The worst of these feel like casual snapshots.

The last two chapters are on HDR and shooting panoramas, but the information density is really low and generic. These sections felt a bit like filler material to me. Any person doing casual experimentation with either of these topics would learn more just playing with the software than reading this book.

I'd summarize by saying there is a lot of good information in one place in this book, but it's not organized that well, and there are holes in the explanations. If you have a decent grasp of fundamentals, but still consider yourself a novice, this book might help fill the gaps. But if you're a raw beginner, I'd suggest other books before reading this one. This book is still worth a read, but I wouldn't put it on anyone's 'must have' list.