27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Looking to learn alot??? Get this book, January 24, 1998
John Hedgecoe's Photography Basic book is packed with over 150 pages of great tips on photography.
I find this book to be one of the best books on photography out on the market today. It is easy to understand, covers most topics and is full with hundreds of color photographs.
John gives expert advice and tips so you will get up and shooting better photos in no time. If you are looking to learn photography this is the book for you.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It helped me take better photographs, March 3, 2000
I bought this book a month back. From the day I bought this book till now, I have seen a marked improvement in the photographs I take. I did not know much about photography and now I am able to look for details in a photograph and am able to judge on how it could have been improved. I cannot claim to have mastered the art of photography but I am certainly thinking now before I go about taking a picture. Another thing that was cool about this book is that it was well laid out and joe had explained the techniques in a very crisp fashion(unlike in otherbooks where you find a lot of text that really puts off even a determined learner).
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Two words: stay away, July 30, 2007
This review is from: John Hedgecoe's Photography Basics, Revised Edition (Paperback)
John Hedgecoe is a veteran photographer with years of valuable experience, but he keeps publishing what I call "very pretty but very useless" photo books, and this is (yet another) one of them. The book is beautifully published (as are his even more lavish DK books), and very well written, but the information is often quite out of date (he teaches you how to load a roll of film; but the words PIXEL or MEGAPIXEL or CMOS do not even appear in the index; on the other hand, the term CLOUDS has 5 multi-page references - go figure).
It is worth noting that while the book claims to be for beginners,it illustrates all points by using National Geographic-caliber photos. No - even if you follow the advice, your photos will not look like that. Hedgecoe is an accomplished, very experienced photographer - there is no doubt about that, but the photos included here were shot using equipment that costs thousands ("teaching" you how to take pictures like that w/ a point-and-shoot is cruel and pointless), and even one brief look at many portraits suggests that elaborate flash setups or professional studio lighting was used - using this stuff to illustrate how to use a point-and-shoot is a joke, and will leave you frustrated and disappointed. Even worse (perhaps very tellingly) virtually none of dozens of beautiful photographs are accompanied by ANY shooting info. (type of camera, speed/aperture, lens, etc.). I'd venture a guess that not one of them was shot using anything like the basic PandS cameras shown in the intro. How are you supposed to learn if you can't even know this basic info about the photos used as "examples"? What a joke!
If you want a coffee-table book, there are better ones; if you want to learn how to take better photos, try something else (e.g., Peterson's Learning Exposure or any Lee Frost books).
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