Customer Reviews

Michael Freeman's Top Digital Photography Tips (A Lark Photography Book)

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

 

 

As reviewers before me have pointed out, Michael Freeman is a very talented and indeed very highly respected photographer and with "Michael Freeman's Top Digital Photography Tips" he has brought a bit of his immense knowledge closer to all the rest of us.

The book is written in roughly the same format as Scott Kelby's "The Digital Photography Book" with one tip taking up one or two pages and all with excellent photographs to illustrate the principle being described. In stark contrast to Mr. Kelby, however, Freeman writes about his subject, photography, in a sincere, easy-going way, omitting the irritating, superfluous 'humour' of his colleague. The language is easily understandable, and you get a feeling that the author speaks to you, not down to you. The advice given is not for professionals, but rather aimed at the novice-notsonoviceyetnotpro. Even though some of the advice may seem a bit trivial or basic, I think it never hurts to go over them again every now and then. It just might give you a new perspective on things. And then again, the format of the book makes it entirely possible to skip whichever piece of advice you want or just look up one particular bit of interest. The tips are just that, tips. They're not a formula to succes, but a suggestion as how to go about handling many different situations in photography. It covers a lot of ground and in the back you'll find an appendix of suggested literature and websites covering the subjects treated in this book in more detail.

There are, however, quite a lot of spelling errors, which just bothers me. It seems unprofessional and, to a degree, sloppy. This is not, I'm sure, the fault of the author, but that of the editor.

Having compared this book with Scott Kelby's "Digital Photography Book", I'll say that, unless you are absolutely camera-just-out-of-the-box new to photography (in which case you should get both, I think), this is the superiour volume.

This book has been my first Michael Freeman book, but it will certainly not be the last.

I am at a point where, after doing photography for more than 50 years, if I find one useful tip in a lesson or book or video or seminar, I think it to have been well worth my time to have investigated it.

I have made notes on over 20 pages in this book. I keep it by my bed and use it as I would a reference guide. It has been that helpful in understanding what my digital camera does, how it does it and why it helps me with my images: theoretical to practical. That is a rare, valuable book to me.

I am not usre how it would be for a beginner to read this, but for advanced amateurs or photo-artists, it is worth having. It is techy, without be too techy...

Almost in similar fashion to Scott Kelby's "The Digital Photography Book," Michael Freeman provides the reader with 101 tips of how to get better pictures. It practically summarizes almost everything you need to know in photography. Its a great book that I would recommend to any beginner photographer, or an intermediate who just wants to make sure that they have got everything covered.

There's nothing new about a list of tips, but of course it depends on who's making it. I too am getting frustrated with an increasing number of books about photography by NON-photographers. If I want to learn a skill, a craft or an art, I want to learn it from a professional. Michael Freeman is one of the very few writers who actually IS a renowned professional photographer. More like this, please! Can't wait for the next 101 great tips.

Michael has written too many books. Even though I wished, I cannot keep his pace in reading them (and probably my pocket won't allow it). This one is an honest and comprehensive mix of two other books I reviewed in these pages: Pro Photographer's D-SLR Handbook (A Lark Photography Book)and The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos. Both got 5 stars from me. This collection of tips covers a large part of the digital world, and it also includes some of the ideas and recommendations from "The Photographer's Eye". I truly recommend it to the vast majority of photographers. You may find extremely useful tips put in a very simple, plain way. Reading is easy. Depending on your level of expertise, you may as well find that you knew 70/80 tips out of the 100 hundred reported in the book. However, why do you buy a book? To improve your expertise, to broaden your knowledge, to refine your art and your perception. Whatever is the reason, if you found just only one tip that could make the real difference, wouldn't it be worth the money and the time?

Max

It's great to see a book about how professional photographs are really taken. There are oh so many books being churned out by people who aren't even photographers! Just wannabe book writers. This guy shoots for top international magazines and publishers, and the pictures here show it. Like all Michael Freeman's books, this is the real thing - no-nonsense, professional, no talking-down, written for other intelligent photographers.

Actually hard to review this book without comparing it to the Kelby books. Lets say, this one is 5 stars and Kelby's is negative 5. Michael Freeman delivers his advise without the annoying corny jokes that take up half the space in Kelby's books, his advise is simple yet deep and is backed up with countless (stunning) images from his own work (as opposed to Kelby's which is mostly stock images). His advise is logically structured and has a sense of continuity. Highly, highly recommended.

This is a decent book if you don't know anything about photography. Half of the advice is pretty helpful. But the other half is overly verbose and common sense. For example, 9) Situational Awareness (no duh!!!), 10) Stay with the Situation (duh!). There are of course some helpful sections Color, Composition, etc. In the end I found the organization of the book to be too random for my taste. For example, the author intermixes his stories with the topic that goes off tangent, and throughout the book he keeps talking about how important it is to do post processing.

He's also an advocate of HDR (high dynamic range) using expensive softwares, and has many pages dedicated to using software to make the picture better, even though it really belongs in the processing section. Look, if I'm really interested in post processing, I'd buy a post processing book. Overall, not very impressed with the book.