Book Review: The Digital Photography Book 1

I have related this blog, or rather the frequency of the posts therein, to Busses before now, and this is no exception, having posted something over the weekend I am now moving on to post reviews on 3, yes 3, Books that I have just finished.

In a departure to the norm these are NOT books that I have been given for the purpose of writing reviews but in the case of 2 of them I bought them with my own, hard earned money, the other, the one I am about to review, was bought for me by a friend as my Christmas Present.

Anyhow, I have decided that I will generally write a review of pretty much every book that I read, its good practice for me and it helps me to cement what I have read, it might bore my reader silly but then I write this blog for my own purposes not yours. You for your part have a choice over whether or not you choose to read them, all the book reviews are, rather helpfully, headed with the words ‘Book Review’ followed by the title, so it does kind of give you a clue!

Anyhow, enough, the book I am currently writing about is the last one to have finished, it’s called The Digital Photography Book By Scott Kelby.

Kelby is an American, but we won’t hold that against him, he is a pro photographer and I had never heard of him before reading this book, but I like his work.

I also like his book, I have to say I was put off for the first few pages, he has a humour to his writing that would work better in person than on paper, and this comes out in the first few pages, after that he tames it down a bit and it’s nice to have the serious bits interjected with the odd bits of humour, saying that about his humour style, it’s not that dissimilar to mine (bound to put some of you off the book) I just don’t think it transfers to paper too well, when used as liberally as he does in the first few pages.

Kelby sets out to give a huge amount of information in a very minimal space, he doesn’t go into the real technical details of WHY things work just tells you they work, this I like, its uncomplicated its simple, even I can follow his instructions, perhaps with the hints I have gained from this book I might actually be able to take some half decent pictures.

Having read a few books on photography most authors tend to surround their information in all sorts of cloaked language that probably baffles the professionals almost as much as the amateur.

Kelby, by contrast talks in every day modern English, albeit with an American twist, the spelling errors did distract a little but not too bad, Each chapter (there are 10 in all) is broken down to individual sections which are generally no more than a page, so it is very easy to use this book as a training manual, learning as you go, or to refer back to it later on as you suddenly think, now what was it he said about this type of shot? How can I improve this?

I like the simplicity and the realism, he doesn’t advocate you go out spending thousands on equipment you can’t afford and don’t need but gives you tips and hints on how to get the best out of what you already have.

I also like the incorporation of loads of photos and explanations of how the shots were achieved; this really brings the tips and hints to life.

One aspect that made me fall in love with this book right from the start was that Kelby seems to have the same aversion to the use of a flash as I do, preferring instead to shoot low light on a tripod with a slower shutter speed, a man after my own heart there! I think that the average amateur over uses the flash by a long way and loses a lot of the character and natural colours of the shot in so doing, now obviously there is a time and place for the use of a flash and pros will often use one, as fill in, when most amateurs just don’t think it’s necessary but by and large I believe that people actually over use rather than under use the flash, not helped by the automatic selection mode that they choose to shoot in, anyhow, that’s my soapbox just about to collapse so I had better get off it and get on with this review.

The one thing I would criticise, the book says on the front cover ‘Great for point and shoot digital camera owners too’ I would seriously question that! So much of this book is geared to the DSLR market that I don’t think there is much, beyond mere principles, that can be gained for the average point and shoot camera, yes there are some very good tips and hints on composition that work regardless of the type of camera but beyond this I doubt it.

In common with so many authors in this digital age, Kelby rather helpfully points to further advice and resources available on his web site to supplement his advice in the book.

Kelby has written 2 further books on the subject and I have enjoyed book 1 so much that I have ordered book 2.

So, in much briefer form than most of my book reviews, there is my thoughts on this excellent book, I would highly recommend this book for the Amateur Photographer with no or limited experience of DSLR techniques but it would also provide as a helpful guidance for those with more experience, to refresh and hone their thinking.

[houdini]