Customer Reviews

500 Digital SLR Photography Hints, Tips, and Techniques: The Easy, All-in-One Guide to Those Inside Secrets

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

 

 

Leaves you wanting more... 500 little blurbs. Each of the 500 techniques are as little as a one sentence how-to, which only leaves you wanting more information. Which means, you need yet another book to actually learn the techniques presented in this book. The "500 tips" is just a gimicky way of selling the book, and it makes it hard to read. For instance, tips 261-269 on bracketing come out to a total of 13 sentences which span two pages. And yet, 13 sentences on this subject is only a tease.

It's a really pretty book, lots of vibrant, glossy pictures. But it only will take you 20 minutes to skim it and move on to something with more substance. The best person to buy this book should probably be someone who has never held a camera and has just gotten their first one.

Five INFORMATIVE Stars!!

This is another very colorful and well-done book with small font size by photographic expert Chris Weston, which gives 500 "hints, tips, and techniques" concerning Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera usage, ancillary equipment, and unique photographic techniques for both the amateur and the expert photographer. All of which is packaged in a sturdy-looking, small workbook-like paperback format. It also has over 400 stunning photographs in 2 photo-galleries and throughout the book, providing many examples and ideas about what constitutes a good picture and how each was "framed" by the photographer.

And there is a ton of information contained within the 500 tips, many of which may make you say, 'why didn't I think of that?' Some tips are very brief but excellent, for example:

>>(Tip number) "028": (Title): "Review only what you need to." (Tip): "Set the camera so that the auto-image playback is switched off. This will help conserve the batteries."<<

A very brief bit of advice that may help you have sufficient power ready when it is needed for a great shot. Some of those automatic camera features do silently burn up battery power. He makes the point over and over about getting the "settings" right before shooting. He also gives several "recommended camera settings" for different shooting situations: a big plus for amateurs and semi-professionals.

An overview of some of the subjects covered: camera setup; image quality; RAW versus JPEG and TIFF file formats (and the big advantage and disadvantage of JPEG: pay close attention to these two separate tips because these are your actual images which affect resolution and printing quality); file compression; pixels and resolution; noise reduction; an FLMF (focal length magnification factor) chart; batteries; storage media; indoor and outdoor flash photography; white balance (WB); depth of field; ISO; histograms; techniques for different types of subject matter; "Top 10 tips for choosing lenses"; printing and printers; television display usage; and so on. He does not get into commercial brands of equipment beyond FLMF, although some are shown for example only. Just follow instructions carefully and have your camera technical manual handy for reference. DSLR users may find themselves tabbing, highlighting, and marking up this book as you work your way through it. It's printed with small font size on very colorful and durable-looking glossy paper. Happy Shooting! Five PHOTOGENIC Stars.

(Paperback with very colorful, glossy pages; 8" x 9" small workbook-size format; 128 pages.)

You'll enjoy browsing through this book, picking up nuggets of information here or there. The 500 tips in this book are certainly more easily digested than what you might find in a huge, comprehensive guide to digital SLR photography.

But the tips are a mixed bag. A lot of them are the sort of thing you'll find in your camera manual or could figure out using common sense (turning off picture review to save battery power comes to mind. D'oh.) Others are a little misleading. My personal pet peeve is calling the crop factor produced by digital SLRs with a smaller than "full-frame" sensor a "focal length multiplier factor." The focal length isn't being multiplied, which might imply reduced depth-of-field. The image is simply being cropped, and, because of the way we do math in our heads it's easier to calculate equivalent field-of-view by multiplying the focal length by the reciprocal of the true crop factor, rather than dividing.

But my comments are just nit-picks. Overall, I think this book is well worth having, if only because it extracts a healthy helping of common-sense tips and presents them in a form that's easy to absorb.

This book glosses over a lot of techniques. The tip is given, with a sentence or 2 to follow up on it. While much of the advice is good or even excellent the book doesn't go in depth on anything. When combined with the other books I have bought on digital SLR Photography it is helpful. On its own not so much. I would recommend this book as a starter, you'll need other books to get in depth on the Tips.

So far I have found it to be very imformative. It's step by step how to process has been very helpful.

I purchased this as a gift for a 15 year old camera buff with his first SLR Digital. He said the book is great and he uses it constantly. That tells me the book is a great asset. As soon as I can afford an SLR, I'll be picking up a copy of the book for me too!

A Gift for my husband, He said it has great simple info in it.