Customer Reviews

A Guide to Astrophotography with Digital SLR Cameras

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

 

 

This CD by Jerry Lodriguss on astrophotography with a Digital SLR camera is the best written and informative product I have had the pleasure to own and learn from. I have more than 20 books on this subject in my collection and this is by far the best. I highly recommend it to all who are or may be interested in "astrophotography."

For a beginning astrophotographer or one with the interest, this book excels. It covers every aspect from A to Z including required equipment and software to optional equipment and software. I feel that 70-75% of this book is geared towards beginners.

Intermediates like myself will find that the majority of the topics covered up to the processing chapters to be unnecessary. We already have the equipment and have been taking images. We are wanting to take our images from average to great. I did find the processing chapters useful. I have already incorporated the Photoshop tools into my processing. However, the information relating to Photoshop is limited and leaves me feeling like there is much more that Photoshop can offer.

I gave it 4 stars as the book itself, format and information is great. Most important is to try and determine if you are a beginner or intermediate astrophotographer.

Jeff

I looked at the web pages and compared them to the CD. The web pages are informative, but the CD includes video and practice files. It's like comparing the free version of photoshop to the full version. You can get started with the free version, but as you progress, it will only take you so far. That is when you need the full version. The CD includes pages from the web site, but adds more written pages covering more advanced techniques. In addition, video and practice files help to hone your skills before you wreck a few of your hard earned astrophotos.
I probably would not strongly recommend this book if you are employed in the virtual media field, or are a professional free lance digital photographer, as you are most likely quite adept with photoshop and beyond. However, if you are an old school film astrophotographer (like myself), finally making the switch to digital, a novice/intermediate digital person, or a newbe, you will find this book quite useful. If you are an advanced digital astrophotographer, you might be able to compare Jerry's technique to your own, especially for the low price.
If you are just getting started, believe it or not, digital astrophotography is far easier to master than film work. This CD is a great place to start!

The previous reviews all reflect my feelings as well: this is a great introduction to the topic for even a raw beginner; the information is in-depth enough to take a beginner to the intermediate; the organization and format are top-notch (but I too would prefer a physical book to use for reference); but what this text does that very few these days bother to is provide sufficient background and detail to the subject to truly make you knowledgeable should you choose to study and apply the information. Every step and page covers the why, as well as the how, while maintaining a very readable style.

There are many useful hyperlinks throughout the book to products or vendors websites where the equipment being discussed can be purchased or investigated further but several I tried were dead. This only adds to my desire to have this book either in physical format or provided as a download at half the cost. Had this been a physical book or cheaper download I would have rated it 5 without hesitation.

I knew that this was going to be a CD but it's much harder to read a CD than it is a paper book. Probably woundn't do this again.

I gave a five-star review to the Lodriguss book on Phototshop and this one is just as good. This is a "must-have" for the DSLR astrophotographer and with different strengths than are found in other books that cover DSLR astrophotography. Lodriguss uses Images Plus for processing. I tried it and liked it. Specific protocols and advice make this book especially valuable.

Jerry has done an excellent job with this work. It covers all of the dSLR astrophotography concepts in clear detail. I just wish it were in book rather than CD format. It is hard to leaf through CD's or to recline beside the pool with them. That, plus the high price is what brought me to give it only four stars. The content gets five stars!

Look, the content is great & spot on.....If only I knew it was for Advanced users! Apparently, there's a beginner's version I should've bought first. All in all, the book/CD helped me buy my first digitial SLR, & that's good enough :)

Jerry Lodriguss' enthusiasm for astrophotography is truly contagious as is clear to anyway who reads this book. The book contains a wealth of knowledge drawn from Jerry's extensive experience both as a professional sports photographer and an accomplished astro-imager. Some earlier reviewers were unhappy that this book is an electronic book. While I certainly understand the appeal of a physical book that you can crawl into bed with, one should not overlook the fact that there are some significant advantages to an electronic book. For one thing, an electronic book can be (and this one is) dynamic. For example, there are places where you mouse over on an image and you instantly get another version of the same image. The associated text discusses the two images and how they are related to each other. This "blinking" of images is very useful and hard to imitate in a physical book. Also, when discussing commercial products, there are links to the vendors' websites. Such links are very convenient. Finally, I would point out that astroimages look better on computer screens than they do in print. A computer screen emits light at each star location in an astrophotograph. In this way, the star appears brighter than what one sees on paper. Anyway, this electronic book is a joy to read. I recommend it to anyone interested in astrophotography.

As with my another book from the same author, it arrived fast, although I'm located in Eastern Europe.

I read book for the first time just to get acquainted. The amount of new information, new techniques and tips was so high, so I decided that I just need to read it through without getting deep into details. And now, when I have the overview, I read again topics to get deeper into the subjects. And I really like this book, the material and the way it is being presented.

A very nice thing is a number of video lessons and source files for the self-practice. I find it really usefull to take exactly the same source files the author had, go through the whole picture processing flow and compare the results with the ones presented in the book, finding your mistakes and seeing how different settings affects the final image. This is really nice tutor!

I didn't put the highest mark for this book as there's also free software for stack processing of astro images. And I expected this book to talk more bout the free tools, like IRIS from Christian Buil. Rather than this, book is an excellent one, I highly recommend it for everyone with a desire to memorize skies into pictures.

But be prepared to read a lot more bout the skies, it is a big and very interesting topic.