Customer Reviews

Photographic Lenses: Photographer's Guide to Characteristics, Quality, Use and Design

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

 

 

This book gives a reasonably complete explanation of photographic lenses for the casual to moderate user. It has some decent explanations of various lens characteristics. I drop it to a 4 rating because it could have been better had the author used pictures purposely aimed at showing lens differences. Unfortunately someone in the advertising department must have gotten a hold of the production decisions and filled the book with cutesy stock-photo advertising type shots that dumb the personality of the book down to a coffee table type book rather than create the educational type experience it could have been. A shame such great information is presented like a PhotoShop retouched advertising brochure.

If you have ever owned a Hasselblad you most likely have a copy of Ernst Wildi's The Hasselblad Manual - virtual bible for Hasselbald owners. Once again Wildi exhibits his mastery of photographic equipment in this book, Photographic Lenses: A photographer's guide to characteristics, quality, use and design. Have you ever confused depth of field with depth of focus? Wildi will set you straight. Clear diagrams, succinct, precise and clear writing and wonderful images abound in this 125-page volume. There is nothing left out of this book. Wildi discusses lens characteristics, understanding advertising claims, lenses for film and digital photography, lens specifications, focal lengths and zoom lenses. And those are just the first few subjects talked about in chapter one. Don't let the number of topics lead you to think that the subjects aren't covered thoroughly, though. They are. The information is clear enough for beginners to understand, informational enough for pros to learn something new. You can't go wrong with this volume.

I agree with the review, Seriously Disappointed, so I won't restate what has already been said in that review, but I would like to give an example of why this book lacks good content. In chapter 4, Image Quality, the author discusses depth of field and in that discussion he tries to explain what Hyperfocal Distance is and it goes like this, "Any lens is set to the hyerfocal distance when the infinity mark on the focusing ring is opposite the aperture that is set on the lens." So far so good. " If you want to know the hyperfocal distance, look at the distance opposite the index mark. The minimum depth of field distance is found opposite the corresponding aperture marking to the left of the index." What?????? Now I must admit that my photographic knowledge is strictly as an enthusiast but I have seen better explanation of hyperfocal distance from Google searches........

I would guess the author uses a medium format camera since most of the pictures and diagrams are for this type of camera, which is usually purchased by the professional photographer. Why he thinks a professional photographer would need this type of entry level photography information is beyond me.

If you've been around 35 mm cameras for a few years, and you've learned to use them in the manual mode, as I have, you will find very little new information in this book. If you're new to the 35 mm SLR or manually setting your camera lens, you will find enough information in this book to thoroughly confuse you.

Save your money for a class on photography at your local community college. It'll be better spent!

It gave me a great insight to my questions and answers that brought clarity to the subject.

This book lacks focus -- excuse the pun. There is commentary regarding 35mm, medium format and large format cameras, as well as digital. Yet, I believe, the major audience probably does not use all three. It would be more useful to concentrate on one format, perhaps the most popular.

There is no correlation between the text and the images. The images are awful when it comes to truly supporting the concepts that are in the text. The text is equally poorly written.

Don't get me wrong, there is some valuable information in this book, but it's hard to find and it's not easily extracted.