Customer Reviews

Manual of Photography, Ninth Edition (Media Manual)

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

 

 

I don't normally take the time to write recommendations, but I thought I would take the time to comment on this book. I am sure there are plenty of people out there who are frustrated, like I was, because they can't find a comprehensive and technical piece of literature that explains in great detail the many laws, properties, and techniques that comprise the field of photography. If you are one of these people then this is your book.

I have been searching for months and all I had found was an endless list of simple self-help books geared toward amateur photographers. This is all fine and dandy, but what I wanted was a book written for the professional photographer that explained all the education that I learned back in college, but then forgot. If you want to learn in great detail about topics that other books just gloss over, briefly mention or skip altogether then this is your book.

Be forwarned, however, that there is probably more information in this book than you can wrap your head around. It delves deeply into physics, chemistry, and mathematics. You don't need to know all of this stuff to understand the book or photography for that matter, but if you want to learn the underlying principles of what makes photography possible it is all here.

I highly recommend this book as a complete reference manual for the advanced amateur or professional photographer.

This book is simply wonderful. It is a detailed and comprehensive treatise on the physical, optical, chemical and otherwise scientific theory behind photography (the authors all have a bevy of these wonderfully quaint British learned society titles, in addition to a hefty list of PhDs and graduate degrees). Also distinctive is that the first edition was published in 1890 and thus it spans three centuries!

That said, the coverage of the latest developments like digital photography is impressive, and this is one of the first photography textbooks that have been updated completely for the coming migration to digital, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

I've been looking for a long time for such a book, that explains the theory without patronizing a scientifically literate reader. For instance, the book explains how ISO ratings are defined for film and for electronic sensors, how depth of field is computed, the diffraction limit on sharpness at small apertures and so on. If you are afraid of equations, this is not the book for you.

I have bought this book based on the prior two reviews. Read it with a pen and paper a few times. And the overall impression is "indifference bordering on disappointment".

Let me though first mention the positives that I found about this book. It covers a lot of topics on photography. It can provide the first (more technical) understanding of photography. It provides references that you can research if you want a greater in-depth understanding of photography. It is what I would call an encyclopedic, i.e. reference, text, albeit quite inadequate.

Yet, it is incomplete and some sections are inaccurate. Subject that are incomplete include photographic flashes, densitometry, color film development chemistry (not pre-mixed Kodak solutions), color reproduction with negative films, and many many others. When different sections of the book are interrelated, they are not even cross-referenced within such sections. If they use formulas, such formulas may have even different designations for the same quantities.

The section on electronic flash is especially troubling. Let me tell you what bothers me here. The book is written by two PhD's, one MS and one BS, i.e people that should supposedly know basic physics. Yet they use a term W-s^(-1) [sorry, I cannot reproduce exponents here: the term reads Watt-second to the minus 1, i.e. W/s Watt per second). Originally I thought that this was just a typo, but they use it throughout this section. They even go farther to say that this quantity is "often STILL called Joules" (quote). Watt/s is not a Joule. Joule is a basic SI measure of energy or work and nobody, to my knowledge, has replaced the SI metric system. So the usage of words "often still" is completely inappropriate. Watt is the SI measure of power, i.e. the rate of change of work or energy. Watt per second measures a rate of change of power. Watt per second is related to energy like acceleration is related to distance. The proper formula for Joule is: J = W x second. So everywhere, when you see Ws^(-1), you should replace it with Ws (i.e. Watt-second)

Let's go farther to formula 11 of this chapter. It uses "J" designation in it. But J is never defined. NOWHERE. After spending many hours on the Internet, I still could not find what J is suppose to represent. The only thing I could deduce is that if flash efficacy is measured in lumens per Watt as the authors define on page 24, the J must be a unitless constant, provided however that the flash tube efficacy formula is correct (but can I trust it now?)

The basic rating formula for a flash relating BCPS or ECPS to the Guide Numbers is not given at all. I can only guess that it can be deduced by equation 12 if BCPS (beam candle power-seconds) = R x P x E-sub-i of the formula if GN is measured in meters. You need to research this outside of the book. GN is never derived and it is not mentioned that it is dependent on the units of measure (i.e. meters or feet) - pretty basic information I would say.

I can go on and take apart the majority of sections of this book that I consider inadequate. I will not do that - it is too time consuming. I will only mention as my final comment, the book is written in an inconsistent manner. Some topics are replete with mathematical formulas and derivations, from basic to complex. A great number of chapters, though, that beg for more detailed information, derivations, formulas, and descriptions are very rudimentary.

My grade for this book is "two stars" and only for its compilation of topics and its limited references. I spent too much money on this book and so will you if you buy it.

This book is considered to be a standard work. That is what I was looking for. Having a few years practice in photography, I wanted to go deeper into the subject. After several weeks in the reading, and in re-reading certain passages, I am in certain areas more confused than at the outset. It's not the maths, no, I have a background in engineering, rather the somewhat dis-jointed and perplexing manner in which different parts are presented. Example: Ch 4, page 45, "Graphical construction of images", sub (4) speaks of "meridional ray at height "X" above the axis, see fig. 4.9b, but "X" is nowhere to be found, neither here nor in the next figure 4.10. The said ray even proudly stated by the author as being absent from the examples "These rules except the last - i.e (4), the mysterious "X" - are shown..." This is hardly conducive to enlightenment. Other example: Ch 4 "Circle of confusion", (no play on words intended), page 52 & following, the notion of cycles/mm or lp/mm is introduced but we have to wait for Ch 6 "Resolution" page 81 for a definition of same. It's as though the authors forget here and there that the reader is not necessarily up to speed. So be it, but that's why we bought the book in the first place, so we were counting on you gentlemen.

Then again, (among other things but let's not go on and on), I find the absense of colour in the chapters handling this subject to be rather surprising, to say the least, especially Ch. 23, whose (ironic?) title is "Colour Matters". One does not buy such a reference work to be swamped with art work, but for goodness sake, as in its name, colour is colour and would surely benefit from a little chromicity here and there.

Granted this work should over time deliver a few handy pointers. Right now though, if I were asked to evaluate these PhD et al authors, I'd be inclined to comment "could do better if they tried". The textual explanations are very often longwinded therefore lacking in clarity and as the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" says, less verbosity and a few more diagrams would surely help, but in some cases this books' diagrams are themselves confusing.

To conclude: I was disappointed by this work, (I ordered it on third september 2009 for holiday reading. Alas, it arrived at my home address on about the 20th, several days after my departure, without which delay I might well have returned this book).

I note that the editor "Focal Press", will be publishing (announced for Oct 2009 or shortly thereafter) another work of like content "The Manual of Photography and Digital Imaging, Tenth Edition By Elizabeth Allen and Sophie Triantaphillidou". this may be worth the wait but to be thoroughly perused before purchase; once bitten...

Meanwhile, for readers familiar with the french language, the latest - that is the 3rd. edition (by Dunod) of "Cours de photographie numérique : Principes, acquisition, stockage de René Bouillot (Broché - 23 septembre 2009)", gives an excellent and clear view of principles and practice in this field, lacking only a section on colour but which can be found elsewhere. Another work in french giving a good deal of handy instruction is "Eléments de technologie pour comprendre la photographie De Michel De Ferrières, éditions VM".

This comment was made to me by a very talented photographer, and now I know what he meant!
There is so much info here, it will never expire....