Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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85 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Only Game in Town, March 15, 2002
Most new cameras come with a built in flash or the capability to add a separate flash unit. Usually the instructions that come with the camera tell you some of the mechanics of using the flash, including something called through-the-lens flash, but leave you in the dark (pun intended) about when and how to use them. If you feel that you want to get something more from a flash than a little light in a dark room, you may be looking for expert help. Well, Susan McCartney may be of a little help but not much more. On the other hand, since this seems to be the only fairly recent book on the subject in the catalog, maybe this is as good as it gets.McCartney's book is divided into four parts. The basic flash section deals with cameras with built in flash with an emphasis on point and shoot cameras. The second part deals with detachable flash. The author calls the third part advanced flash (which is a collection of hints). The fourth part deals with specialized and professional flash, which includes those larger units with their own power sources that the pros haul around. The author tells you how to use your electronic flash on your camera and off, both as a main light and as fill flash (or as she insists upon calling it, flash fill.) However, she is so repetitive that you wonder if this couldn't have been a sixteen-page pamphlet. I personally found more help in reading the forty pages on flash in Bob Krist's "Secrets of Lighting on Location". And at least Krist's pictures are exciting while most of McCartney's are pedestrian. The biggest problem that every flash photographer has to overcome is the Inverse Square Law, which explains that light from a point source falls off dramatically the further you get from the source. That is why flash pictures often have well lit foregrounds with dark backgrounds. A good flash book should deal with this problem extensively, but "Mastering Flash Photography" gives only a page to the subject. McCartney scarcely mentions that the easiest way to deal with this problem is to keep all the important elements in the picture at about the same distance from the flash. In fact many of her illustrations demonstrate the dreaded "hot spot" that poorly managed flash creates. I was also disappointed by the fact that the author did not discuss when flash was the appropriate tool to use. I know from my own experience that there are times when it's better to take a long exposure than to use flash, and other times when just a touch of fill flash can change the whole nature of a picture. There's no hint of this in the book. This is an area of photography where the technology is changing rapidly. The newest cameras all provide "smart" fill flash features that weren't readily available five years ago when this book was written. Unfortunately, the most up-to-date material will be the instructions that come with your camera or flash unit, and these will tell you what to do technically but won't tell you much about making better pictures. I've actually found that I've learned a lot about using flash for artistic purposes from John Shaw's nature photography books. But I suppose, if you're really intent on fully developing your flash skills, plowing through McCartney and then trying to apply what the author has to say, with a lot of experimenting, will be of a little value to you.
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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointing, probably not the book you're looking for, November 25, 2003
By A Customer
As a photographer working with available light only, I bought this book hoping to learn to ins and out of flash photography.
A few pages into it realized that this book wasn't the one. The first chapter covers the fundamentals of flash operation -
how does flash work and the basic concepts to remember, and that was VERY helpful. But it was written sluggishly, which
made the reading tiresome, confusing, and un-exciting.
It's down-hill after that. I found later chapters to be off the subject, or irrelevant, or too general. For example, I didn't need to read about the difference between portrait photography and photojournalism photography, or the different style of people photography - I just wanted to know how to apply flash in both - and this information was missing, or too shallow. I had to fish for the relevant information among lots information that repeated itself but wasn't interesting, like the different types of camera that use flashes. The information I was looking for, like specific techniques and ideas, was scattered throughout the book in an unorganized matter, if at all.
The sample pictures were mediocre, at best, stuff that I wouldn't even consider showing my friends... Seriously, I was surprised to find pictures like this in a photography book. I didn't learn how to take good flash pictures in different situations, I didn't learn how to apply different techniques of flash photography to take special or interesting pictures, and I didn't learn anything that my flash or camera manual wouldn't teach me.
I wish I could return it to the book store, but I threw away the receipt. Very, very disappointing, not the book for anybody who has been using a camera for more than a few weeks. If this is the first time you've seen a camera, maybe. For everyone else - waste of time and money.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good Technicals Not so hot Photos, March 23, 2000
This is an excellent book for those who wish to know the A-B-C of how to use an electronic flash in all manner of situations. The big minus is that it doesent give you any pointers on how to take appealing looking photographs. Nearly all of the sample pictures in the book are little better than posed snapshots and don't make you want to grab your camera and rush out the door like Brian Peterson's books do. If you want to compose good flash photos you have to combine the books of the two authors.
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