Michael Freeman's Digital Photography Reference System: The Complete Photographer's Library, in a Box [Hardcover]

Michael Freeman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0240813146 | ISBN-13: 978-0240813141 | Publication Date: June 21, 2010 | Edition: 1

This is a perfect and unique gift for people with a DSLR or for yourself!

If you're new to digital photography, by the time you buy all of the reference books you'll need to learn, you'll end up spending hundreds of dollars. This cost-effective, all-in-one system delivers the how-to's and why's of digital photography, and it's written by one of the best photographers and teachers in the field: Michael Freeman.

Each component of the kit is brand new, lavishly illustrated with jaw-dropping photos and inspiring guides that will teach you how to be a better photographer, and exclusive to this collection, not sold separately.

Included in Michael Freeman's Digital Reference System:

• An oversized, gorgeous hard cover book The Art of Digital Photography
• The Digital Camera Handbook
• Digital Photography Workflow
• Creative Image Editing and Special Effects
• Handy Pocket Guide to Shooting
• Shooting Tips Wallet Guide to take with you in your back pocket
• Plus an interactive DVD featuring Michael Freeman

All of this is enclosed in a handy metal case where your photography supplies can be stored.

• An all-in-one reference to both teach the basics and inspire you to be a better photographer
• This unique package offers solutions to all of your photography questions!
• Complete with a reference on workflow, composition, special effects/photo manipulation, and interactive DVD, a pocket guide to take with you, and more.
• The only reference kit out there specifically for DSLR owners

From Michael Freeman, author of the global bestseller, The Photographer's Eye. Now published in sixteen languages, The Photographer's Eye continues to speak to photographers everywhere. Reaching 100,000 copies in print in the US alone, and 300,000+ worldwide, it shows how anyone can develop the ability to see and shoot great digital photographs.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Selected Images from the Michael Freeman Digital Photography Reference System

Just fitting the frame: two Sudanese boys using simple but effective guinea-worm filters.

A slightly weird portrait: one of hundreds of cosplay enthusiasts gathered in Tokyo, dressed as their favorite anime characters.

Beauty in the ordinary: straight from the supermarket, a block of dried noodles comes alive with backlighting.

Wildlife moments: In wildlife photography, always look for moments of behavior and action--here, an oxpecker in position as the hippo yawns.

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Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Michael Freeman on the Michael Freeman Digital Photography Reference System

Dear Amazon Readers,

And now for something completely different . . .

The way photography is moving in these digital days means that it’s much more than simply shoot and then hand the results over to a processing lab. There’s the digital workflow even as you’re out shooting, then the processing, captioning, archiving, and delivery. This is on top of the core photographic skills of managing the camera and equipment and . . . arguably the most important of all, how to see and compose strong, interesting images.

So we thought, let’s tailor a complete reference system so that each part is in exactly the perfect format, from a wallet-sized on-the-spot shooting guide to a DVD tutorial to a large-format book on composition, lighting and all the essential imaging techniques. Seven items in all, packed in a neat aluminum case. Here, though, I thought I’d chip in a little something extra: how the cover shot for the big book, The Art of Digital Photography, was shot. This isn’t actually in the book, so this is just for you Amazon readers.

What I’ve always liked about this image is its simplicity, color, and texture. It came about when I was shooting a book on contemporary Japanese design and interiors. This was a brand new house for a well-known theatre director, built on the coast of Okinawa, and it had a very special tea-ceremony room. This kind of room, uniquely Japanese, is incredibly formal, like the tea ceremony itself. But in this case the owner and architect wanted to do something different and break the rules. One rule is that the room has to have an alcove, and hanging in that alcove is a scroll painting or ink brush painting of scenery. What they did instead was make a long narrow window the same size as a painting, arranged so that it has a precise view of the side of a large rock, and the sea, which I thought was a very neat idea. The alcove should also have a small vase or pot with a single flower, but the design here was a massive red-lacquered slab with a circular depression carved and polished into it.

We poured a little water into this, and placed an orchid bloom to float in it. After I’d photographed the entire room (a tricky double-exposure problem, by the way), I went closer in. The way that the light from the narrow window caught the polished lacquer and the water surface was almost sensual, and certainly abstract, while the intricate and delicate texture of the orchid anchored the shot in reality. I used a 105mm Nikon macro lens--an old companion of mine--stopped it well down to between ƒ16 and ƒ22, and explored. In cases like this, where you know the effect of light and reflections will change with the tiniest shift in camera position, the thing to do is keep the camera to your eye and move around with it, looking only through the viewfinder.

I found three completely different (to me, anyway) images within inches of each other. Having discovered these by moving with the camera hand-held, I then put the tripod in position, because the small aperture and low ISO (pristine texture needed here in the smooth areas) meant a slow shutter speed. Precise framing was essential: two shots with perfect symmetry, one with a centered and exactly vertical line.

--Michael Freeman

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Michael Freeman's Personal Top Ten Tips from the Michael Freeman Digital Photography Reference System

My personal ten top tips . . . ones that I actually follow myself.

You’ll find these and more in the kit, but I’ve made a special short selection . . .

1. BCR: before going out to shoot, always check the three essentials that are easy to miss--Battery (you take it out to charge? Make sure you put it back)--memory Card (you take it out to download? Ditto!)--Raw (settings sometimes get changed, but shooting raw is essential because of what you can later pull out in processing).
2. Choose one mode and stick to it: Cameras offer too big a choice of shooting mode. Make life simple for yourself by choosing the one that you’re most comfortable with--and don’t change to others. I use A for aperture, almost always.
3. Know your shake rating: Know by practicing the slowest shutter speed at which you can guarantee to avoid camera shake. It varies with the lens focal length. Use the camera’s anti-shake feature if it has one.
4. Think deep or shallow: Aperture controls not just exposure, but also depth of field. There are two ways to use it--selective focus on one detail from a wide aperture, or all-sharp from a small aperture. Decide what will best suit your subject before right from the start.
5. Expose for what’s important: The most important exposure advice of all is to decide which subject in the frame is the most important, and expose for that. Only you can decide; the camera can’t tell you.
6. Use the highlight clipping warning: The most valuable information on the back of your camera is the flashing warning that shows you’ve blown the highlights on the shot you just took. Heed it! Lower the exposure if necessary.
7. Archive the light: If the subject doesn’t move (much), like a landscape or an interior, and if the lighting’s contrasty, shoot a range that varies the shutter speed by one or two stops. Reason: you’ve just archived the light, and can process it any way you like later.
8. Don’t hesitate: All your camera settings are as they should be, right? If something’s happening in front of you, just shoot immediately. Hesitation or waiting will lose you that moment.
9. (But) Work the subject: Your first shot may be the best, but you’ll never know if you don’t explore the subject. Stick around for a while, think about different camera angles, points of view, better moments.
10. Composition interesting or boring?: Yes, composition’s a big subject and there’s no one-size-fits-all guaranteed formula, but at the very least experiment with the framing and your camera position. Try off-centering, try tilting, try anything that will make the composition a little more interesting. Keep reminding yourself of this.

Review

"If you know someone who can or should be taking his or her photography to the next level, Freeman's collection would be the ideal holiday gift (and if it happens to be you, it's definitely worth dropping a few broad. Hints)."--reviewed in MacDirectory Magazine

"The Michael Freeman Digital Photography Reference System is a seven set library designed to help the beginner photographer learn the ropes of digital imagery, both artfully and technically. The comprehensive guide covers everything from getting those great shots and post-processing to mastering camera controls and software tools. Though the reference system is aimed at digital photography, most of the concepts discussed are universal to all image capturing, including digital video.. If you're just starting out, struggling to understand your HDSLR camera controls, or just want to learn how to capture stunning video through better composition and proper camera settings, the Michael Freeman Digital Photography Reference System helps to inspire and makes it easy and enjoyable to learn."--VideoMaker Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (June 21, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240813146
• ISBN-13: 978-0240813141
• Product Dimensions: 13.8 x 10.7 x 2.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #848,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Freeman, professional photographer and author, with more than 100 book titles to his credit, was born in England in 1945, took a Masters in geography at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and then worked in advertising in London for six years. He made the break from there in 1971 to travel up the Amazon with two secondhand cameras, and when Time-Life used many of the pictures extensively in the Amazon volume of their World's Wild Places series, including the cover, they encouraged him to begin a full-time photographic career.

Since then, working for editorial clients that include all the world's major magazines, and notably the Smithsonian Magazine (with which he has had a 30-year association, shooting more than 40 stories), Freeman's reputation has resulted in more than 100 books published. Of these, he is author as well as photographer, and they include more than 40 books on the practice of photography - for this photographic educational work he was awarded the Prix Louis Philippe Clerc by the French Ministry of Culture. He is also responsible for the distance-learning courses on photography at the UK's Open College of the Arts.

Freeman's books on photography have been translated into fifteen languages, and are available on other Amazon international sites.

They are supported for readers by a regularly updated site, http://thefreemanview.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Less than expected, July 31, 2010

By 

Jack T. Hosea - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Michael Freeman's Digital Photography Reference System: The Complete Photographer's Library, in a Box (Hardcover)

The product is oriented to a person that has never picked up a camera and has no concept of shutter speed, aperture or ISO. The description led me to believe that several levels of photography were addressed. They aren't. If you have any idea about the use of a camera, you will find the information juvenile.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice Package for Beginners, Amateurs, and Also Experienced Photographers, January 29, 2011

By 

Gregory E. Foster "operabruin" (Portland, ME, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Michael Freeman's Digital Photography Reference System: The Complete Photographer's Library, in a Box (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Any level of photographer less than a serious professional will get great benefit from this excellent package, and some of the pros might also, anyway.

Earlier I reviewed Freeman's The Photographer's Mind: Creative Thinking for Better Digital Photos , which is an excellent book, and so I ordered this set when it came up as a Vine Review selection. I can easily recommend this unique package of photographic helpers to anyone from the barest beginner through, perhaps, some professionals to aid/instruct them in achieving the results that they want to get with various types of image capture and/or image manipulation.

I have worked with conventional photography since I was in my late teens, and with the digital medium for about the last ten years or so. Certainly I am not on the par with a professional and have never had any thoughts in that direction. However I am what I would call a serious amateur photographer, with experience at many levels from composition/setting up shots, processing, printing conventionally and also fairly well rounded in the digital realm of things (I hated it at first and had to force myself into making the change, and still in many cases "go the old way" for certain things) and still continue to "grow".

Book 1 Is a smyth sewn oversized "art" book of many beautiful images in their final renderings and also various other shots and alternates in thumbnails that explain/illustrate how/why the final is the way it is vs these alternate and intermediate versions. Having been in the graphics and printing/publishing industry all my life, working with images and the correction of images, I can vouch for how clearly this comparative viewing works in showing/teaching why one image or shot works, another doesn't, etc.

Book 2 Is a handbook on the digital camera, how it works, how it's different, etc., and how to use it to its best effect, etc.

Book 3 Explains/teaches workflow and getting an organized and productive order to handling your images from raw on up through the final correctional and printing.

Book 4 Instructs you how to work on your photos in imaging programs like Photoshop (what I use) and a couple of others, to create special effects, changes, etc., to make even a mediocre image look great. Being creative, this is where I most love the digital photo process.

Book 5 Is a medium sized pocket guide with tips, suggestions and help for you with the shooting process, and how to get the best work possible up front to begin with. I to this day have always carried with me a small notebook with "things to remember", "to do", "not to do", etc., so can vouch just how handy this little book is.

Item 6 Is a "wallet" sized guide that I find folds out into a most "unwallet" sized hard to handle outdoors, multi-folded and easy to lose item.

Item 7 Is a tutorial DVD that will help the novice certainly, and I bet even the more experienced photographer will use it also for it's instructive content. I can't imagine that one wouldn't take advantage of A/V instruction!

The whole thing comes in a briefcase sized aluminum carrier. Others have commented here about this item. Personally, I have the books of this set together on my bookshelves, along with the DVD (which I placed in a cd jewel case), and I keep the pocket guide and wallet guide both in my camera case. The briefcase itself I find is a perfect carrier/holder for all my notebooks, warrantee documentation, current photo or equipment mags/guides etc., to take along with me, but keep all together neatly and easy to carry!

The end result, after all this, is that I cannot believe almost any "photographer" would not find this package a real valuable asset to his enjoyment of his hobby, and a pleasure to work with and learn from.

"Highly Recommended" would be my response to anyone asking my opinion on this great collection!

~operabruin

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Collection, September 13, 2010

By 

Alex Slater - See all my reviews

This review is from: Michael Freeman's Digital Photography Reference System: The Complete Photographer's Library, in a Box (Hardcover)

As the package infers, this is a reference system and in this regard is perfect for this use. A very thorough collection that offers beginners and those interested in digital photography a solid base on which to expand upon.