Book Review: Complete Digital Photography by Ben Long

Complete Digital Photography is now in its fourth edition and that should tell you about the usefulness of this book and the quality of content. While this book contains information on the use of Photoshop, this is not a Photoshop book. This is a book on Digital Photography. The focus here is on what it takes become a quality digital photographer and the tools that are needed.

Complete Digital Photography has become a standard for helping traditional photographers move to digital photography. It has also become a vital resource for those who are new to photography and want to get up to speed fast.

Complete Digital Photography breaks out into 16 chapters in four sections covering 566 pages as well as two appendixes and a CD-ROM. Since the flow of the book is really contained in the four sections that is how I will review it.

Part 1 (chapters 2-4) is a fundamental photography primer. Here you will learn how a digital camera works, how an image sensor works and how your camera makes a digital image. You will also learn the fundamentals about lenses and what apertures, shutter speeds and ISO numbers are and what they mean to your image. Finally you will learn what you need to know to evaluate your images and the nine imaging problems that you will likely encounter.

Part 2 (chapters 5-6) focuses on equipment and software that you will need to do digital photography. This breaks down into the camera and the type of gear that you will need to take photographs. This includes the camera, lenses, special features and accessories. Then you focus on your digital editing workstation. This includes computers, software, monitor and the equipment to get it calibrated.

Part 3 (chapter 7-9) looks at shooting images. Here you will learn of the five practices of building a great shot, how to see, interpret, and compose an image as well as getting to know the basic camera settings. You will then explore metering and exposing an image, how to adjust an exposure, what those funny graphs are on your camera and how to take control of your shot. You will also learn about different types of photography such as landscape, panoramas, black and white and macro amongst others.

Article Author: T. Michael Testi

T. Michael Testi is software developer, a writer, and a photographer. He also blogs at PhotographyTodayNet and at All This and Everything Else.

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