Customer Reviews

National Geographic: The Ultimate Field Guide to Landscape Photography (National Geographic Photography Field Guides)

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With the title containing National Geographic, I had high expectations for this book. I am eagerly learning about Landscape Photography and wanted a book tilled with the technical details that would allow me to approach a certain level of professionalism in my photos.

Here's what you should know before buying this book:

1. The digital portion is only a few pages in the back. The book was clearly adapted from the film version of the book. When people started crying for digital info, they just stuck a few pages on.

2. The digital portion is also incorrect or misleading (shockingly). Here's one example from page 126: "More pixels usually means finer detail, and this holds true for both compact cameras and SLR's." Well...this isn't really true. It's the marketing hype that camera manufacturers are pushing. In reality, it's a combination of the size of the sensor, the megapixels and the ISO speed you set, along with the quality of the lens that means finer detail. If you squeeze 10 megapixels onto a tiny sensor, all you get is more noise.

3. 95% of the book is just talking about EXTREMELY basic stuff. Ie: The rule of thirds, including an "S" shape in your compositions, shoot at sunrise or sunset, etc.

4. This is the biggie for me: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO TECHNICAL INFORMATION ABOUT HOW ANY PICTURE IN THE BOOK IS MADE. Other books, such as the excellent National Audubon Society Guide to Landscape Photography, include camera and exposure info, plus which filters are used and even how the filters are oriented in their holder! Filling a book with pretty pictures (as NG's guide does) teaches me nothing. Telling me how to orient and expose using a Graduated Neutral Density filter (a la Audubon Guide) will allow me to duplicate their results!

This book was a complete waste of money due to the above reasons.

This is a great book to use to improve your photographic skills. There are field trip lessons which concentrate on the techniques from the book.

Before a camping trip in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, I invested in my first digital camera and read this book. This field guide was informative, interesting and inspiring. It provided useful tips on not only handling the camera itself, but also how to look at one's surroundings and be able to convey the sensations at that time to others viewing the photos later. The images throughout the text provided moving examples of Robert Caputo's and other professional photographers' pointers. Advanced photographers looking through this book would appreciate the mastery of these photos, and novices would gain confidence through this guide to eventually achieve this level of photography.