Using his popular bad image/good image pairings of real-life examples, Bryan Peterson takes the reader through all the techniques needed to succeed with digital photography in every popular genre: nature, people, sports, interiors, travel, low-light conditions, travel, weather, commercial portraits, macro, and wildlife—even how to use creative tricks such as reflections. As a bonus, Peterson explains, in straightforward text, the techniques of Photoshop as well as the basics of publishing, printing, and archiving and storing for personal or professional use. Full of great examples for beginners and serious photographers, Understanding Digital Photography makes it easy to create great digital pictures every time.
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Book Description
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About the Author
Bryan Peterson is a well-known
photographer, writer, and teacher.
In addition to his many books for Amphoto, he writes a column that appears in Popular Photography and contributes to prominent magazines.
His workshops and online photo
course at BetterPhoto.com are invariably sold out. He divides his time between Seattle, WA, and Lyon, France.
photographer, writer, and teacher.
In addition to his many books for Amphoto, he writes a column that appears in Popular Photography and contributes to prominent magazines.
His workshops and online photo
course at BetterPhoto.com are invariably sold out. He divides his time between Seattle, WA, and Lyon, France.
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More About the Author
Bryan Peterson is a professional photographer, internationally known instructor, and founder of www.PPSOP.com, The Perfect PIcture School of Photography. He is also the best-selling author of Understanding Exposure, Learning to See Creatively,Understanding Shutter Speed, Understanding Close-Up Photography, Understanding Digital Photography, Beyond Portraiture, and, most recently, Bryan Peterson's Understanding Photography Field Guide. His easy-to-understand writing and teaching style breaks down the complex and often confusing aspects of photography, translating them into what his students routinely describe as "aha" moments. In addition, he has been a commercial photographer for over 30 years, shooting annual reports for many Fortune 500 companies, and his trademark use of color and strong, graphic composition have garnered him many photographic awards, including the New York Art Director's Gold Award and honors from Communication Arts and Print magazine. He currently splits his time between Chicago and France.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
355 of 382 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Reading "Understanding Digital Photography" by Bryon Peterson is a bit like being at a family get-together, and being given a lot of good advice by friendly Uncle Phil over a couple of beers. Then you later discover that friendly Uncle Phil didn't know what he was talking about! It does mar what was otherwise a good experience.
What makes me think of a family get-together is the folksy, jocular tone and the amusing comparisons between technical subjects and familiar things. Here are a few of Bryan Peterson's more colorful attempts at making digital photography understandable:
- The pixels on the sensor work together like a family, like socialism, and it's too bad Stalin and Mao Tse-tung couldn't see this (pg 16).
- JPEGs are like amnesia or like AM radio or like prepared meat loaf (pg 18, 20).
- TIFFs are like elephants (pg 19).
- ISO is like caffeine, and high ISO is like bloodshot eyes (pg 22).
- Long exposure times cause the pixel family to fall apart and have a nervous breakdown (pg 78).
- Checking the background is important, although typically not done regarding the person you're going to marry (pg 96).
- Over-sharpening a picture makes it glow, which could be used to guide Santa Claus and Rudolph (pg 129).
This style of writing may appeal to some people, but it's definitely not my cup of tea.
The book is richly illustrated with a lot of photographs taken by Bryan Peterson. These pictures do a good job of presenting the various techniques being discussed, and they are all good pictures from a purely technical point of view.
However, my aesthetic opinion of most of the pictures is fairly low, i.e., they are not the kind of pictures that I'd like to be able to make someday.
Bryan Peterson favors very colorful photos, and he admits that he pushes the color saturation up on most of his pictures. The composition and subjects of many of his pictures leave a kind of artificial taste, as if the pictures were being made just for the sake of making pictures that will impress.
Of course, taste is something that is very individual, and Bryan Peterson is a successful professional photographer so there are obviously many people who like his pictures.
The most serious problem with this book is the large number of technical errors concerning digital photography. Here are some of the more serious examples:
- "... the more pixels the merrier" (pg 16). Only true up to a point.
- "Every time you open and close a JPEG file on your computer, the file degrades due to data being lost..." (pg 18). Not true, and Bryan Peterson's warnings against using JPEGs are mostly incorrect.
- White balance should always be set to "Cloudy+3" (pg 26). Poor advice, especially when photographing people because of the need to get skin colors correct.
- Landscapes should be shot at f/22 (pg 34) and macros at f/32 (pg 118). This doesn't take the light diffraction problem into account.
- Depth of field properties of a lens are independent of sensor size (pg 39 and 119). Not true.
- Noise reduction should be done last in post processing (pg 57). No, it should be done first.
- Clean the sensor with compressed air (pg 127). No, this can damage the camera.
- Take pictures under-exposed by 3 stops in order to stack 8 of them in Photoshop (pg 148). Crazy advice, you should change the opacity of the layers instead.
- "The output size of that file ... will be around 2048 x 3000 ppi (pixels per inch) ..." (pg 156). Meaningless statement.
Bryan Peterson tells us that he shot film for many years and only recently switched to digital. This book was obviously written before he had learned enough about digital photography to explain it properly.
So, I don't like the tone of the writing and I don't particularly like the pictures and I don't think Bryan Peterson's knowledge of digital photography was up to the task. What did I like about this book?
Actually, the basic concepts regarding photography that Bryan Peterson describes are good. The importance of getting the picture right when shooting it (as opposed to Photoshopping it later), the way in which aperture and shutter speed affect the picture, the importance of how a picture is illuminated and composed, the value of using a tripod; all of this material represents the core concepts of photography that need to be learned in order to be able to consistently take good pictures.
Another thing I appreciated was that Bryan Peterson says that understanding the technology isn't the most important aspect of being a good photographer. "... 99% of all successful photographic images have relied on ... setting a creatively correct exposure and ... creating a well-balanced and compelling composition" (pg 10). This book is inadvertent proof that a lack of technical knowledge does not prevent a person with the proper basic knowledge of photography from taking good pictures.
Still, for a book that is targeted at those who want to learn about digital photography, the many errors disqualify it.
Rennie Petersen
What makes me think of a family get-together is the folksy, jocular tone and the amusing comparisons between technical subjects and familiar things. Here are a few of Bryan Peterson's more colorful attempts at making digital photography understandable:
- The pixels on the sensor work together like a family, like socialism, and it's too bad Stalin and Mao Tse-tung couldn't see this (pg 16).
- JPEGs are like amnesia or like AM radio or like prepared meat loaf (pg 18, 20).
- TIFFs are like elephants (pg 19).
- ISO is like caffeine, and high ISO is like bloodshot eyes (pg 22).
- Long exposure times cause the pixel family to fall apart and have a nervous breakdown (pg 78).
- Checking the background is important, although typically not done regarding the person you're going to marry (pg 96).
- Over-sharpening a picture makes it glow, which could be used to guide Santa Claus and Rudolph (pg 129).
This style of writing may appeal to some people, but it's definitely not my cup of tea.
The book is richly illustrated with a lot of photographs taken by Bryan Peterson. These pictures do a good job of presenting the various techniques being discussed, and they are all good pictures from a purely technical point of view.
However, my aesthetic opinion of most of the pictures is fairly low, i.e., they are not the kind of pictures that I'd like to be able to make someday.
Bryan Peterson favors very colorful photos, and he admits that he pushes the color saturation up on most of his pictures. The composition and subjects of many of his pictures leave a kind of artificial taste, as if the pictures were being made just for the sake of making pictures that will impress.
Of course, taste is something that is very individual, and Bryan Peterson is a successful professional photographer so there are obviously many people who like his pictures.
The most serious problem with this book is the large number of technical errors concerning digital photography. Here are some of the more serious examples:
- "... the more pixels the merrier" (pg 16). Only true up to a point.
- "Every time you open and close a JPEG file on your computer, the file degrades due to data being lost..." (pg 18). Not true, and Bryan Peterson's warnings against using JPEGs are mostly incorrect.
- White balance should always be set to "Cloudy+3" (pg 26). Poor advice, especially when photographing people because of the need to get skin colors correct.
- Landscapes should be shot at f/22 (pg 34) and macros at f/32 (pg 118). This doesn't take the light diffraction problem into account.
- Depth of field properties of a lens are independent of sensor size (pg 39 and 119). Not true.
- Noise reduction should be done last in post processing (pg 57). No, it should be done first.
- Clean the sensor with compressed air (pg 127). No, this can damage the camera.
- Take pictures under-exposed by 3 stops in order to stack 8 of them in Photoshop (pg 148). Crazy advice, you should change the opacity of the layers instead.
- "The output size of that file ... will be around 2048 x 3000 ppi (pixels per inch) ..." (pg 156). Meaningless statement.
Bryan Peterson tells us that he shot film for many years and only recently switched to digital. This book was obviously written before he had learned enough about digital photography to explain it properly.
So, I don't like the tone of the writing and I don't particularly like the pictures and I don't think Bryan Peterson's knowledge of digital photography was up to the task. What did I like about this book?
Actually, the basic concepts regarding photography that Bryan Peterson describes are good. The importance of getting the picture right when shooting it (as opposed to Photoshopping it later), the way in which aperture and shutter speed affect the picture, the importance of how a picture is illuminated and composed, the value of using a tripod; all of this material represents the core concepts of photography that need to be learned in order to be able to consistently take good pictures.
Another thing I appreciated was that Bryan Peterson says that understanding the technology isn't the most important aspect of being a good photographer. "... 99% of all successful photographic images have relied on ... setting a creatively correct exposure and ... creating a well-balanced and compelling composition" (pg 10). This book is inadvertent proof that a lack of technical knowledge does not prevent a person with the proper basic knowledge of photography from taking good pictures.
Still, for a book that is targeted at those who want to learn about digital photography, the many errors disqualify it.
Rennie Petersen
53 of 54 people found the following review helpful
By Jonathan
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Digital photography is not yet second nature to Peterson as is film SLR photography. For example, Peterson writes "2048 x 3000 ppi (pixels per inch)" instead of "2048 x 3000 pixels"--he just doesn't speak the language yet.
Below, Rennie Petersen on May 19 gives the definitive criticism of this book. I own this book as well Peterson's other two books Understanding Exposure, which I highly recommend, and Learning to See Creatively, which I like having but is second to Understanding Exposure. So my review is really summed up in the title.
Below, Rennie Petersen on May 19 gives the definitive criticism of this book. I own this book as well Peterson's other two books Understanding Exposure, which I highly recommend, and Learning to See Creatively, which I like having but is second to Understanding Exposure. So my review is really summed up in the title.
46 of 48 people found the following review helpful
By Bart Willems
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I like Bryan Peterson's other books (Learning to see Creatively and Understanding Exposure) and I was guessing that this would be a combination of the two with some additional tips towards digital photography. I expected a lot out of the book, and it didn't come out.
First of all, the 'photography' part of the book is good. Many examples and tips on how to make better pictures.
But the 'digital' part of the book is bad, really, really bad. Virtually every advice Bryan gives is wrong, or given for the wrong reason. You get the idea that mr. Peterson wanted to jump on the digital bandwagon without knowing anything about digital camera's in the first place.
I bought the book to give it to a friend who just got his first digital camera, and I wanted to see if it would be a keeper for myself. I'm keeping it, but only because I'd be ashamed to give it to somebody.
Again, the photography tips are good, and if it wasn't for the author, I would have given it three stars. But I was expecting something better.
First of all, the 'photography' part of the book is good. Many examples and tips on how to make better pictures.
But the 'digital' part of the book is bad, really, really bad. Virtually every advice Bryan gives is wrong, or given for the wrong reason. You get the idea that mr. Peterson wanted to jump on the digital bandwagon without knowing anything about digital camera's in the first place.
I bought the book to give it to a friend who just got his first digital camera, and I wanted to see if it would be a keeper for myself. I'm keeping it, but only because I'd be ashamed to give it to somebody.
Again, the photography tips are good, and if it wasn't for the author, I would have given it three stars. But I was expecting something better.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome fundamental techniques
Bryan has done the work to break down each digital process into easily digestible parts, so that you don't get overwhelmed by all the things you need to learn. Read more
Published 21 days ago by bsmlight
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Book
Bryan Peterson makes things easy to understand and an easy read at that. I have not found a bad book by this photographer. Sometimes repetitive but good.
Published 3 months ago by Ann
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book
Enjoyed the many different aspects of photography that this book covers. It offers a very understandable perspective to the sometime complicated world of digital photography.
Published 4 months ago by Alpha06be
1.0 out of 5 stars
I didn't even get a receipt
Right after I ordered this product, I realized I had the exact same book that my sister had let me borrow from an intro photography class that she took in college. Read more
Published on November 23, 2010 by LindseyLaBar
5.0 out of 5 stars
Getting Started
I did not find this book to be as helpful as I hoped. But this might be just me, If you new to Digital Photography or just the Digital World then By all means get this book. Read more
Published on November 10, 2009 by Norman R. Cobb
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Price and Fast Shipping !
We bought thhis item at a great price and Fast Shipping , would buy from this seller again !
Published on October 7, 2009 by Granny
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good book.
For beginners mostly. Lots of good pictures by a great photographer and digital tips. For more advanced students there is not much more. I was not disappointed in the book.
Published on September 12, 2009 by Fabio H. Mota
2.0 out of 5 stars
Understanding Digital Photography: Techniques for Getting Great...
Unfortunately its a bit old now and out of date. The basic information os there but it lack relevance. Anyway you live and learn!
Published on June 13, 2009 by Denis Avery
5.0 out of 5 stars
Understanding Digital Photography
Love Bryan Petersons Photography books,He is a fun and easy read with instructions and good ideas to make your Photography turn out better.
Published on February 26, 2009 by Veronica Cantrell
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great explanation of photographic theory applied to digitial cameras
I bought this book about a month ago, and since then, have read most of it. Unlike many more technical photography books, this one was written in a interesting manner as to keep... Read more
Published on December 12, 2008 by D. Styer
