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Many of them are blatantly oversimplified of just plain incorrect. I failed to heed the warnings in the negative reviews (which I normally do) and now I'm terribly regretting this because every bit of critique appears to be true.I usually read introductions and acknowledgements, so this book immediately alienated me with author's ill-conceived sense of humor. I'm amateur photographer and always willing to learn something new, so I was lured to this book by positive reviews in my quest for knowledge and better pictures. If you really want to improve your pictures better read Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition) or Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting. Trust me, you do not need a book to figure out that camera has to be steady to make sharp pictures or that by throwing away you picture CDs you are risking that somebody might gain access to your work. There are plenty of good books for beginners and advanced photographers out there and this is just happens not to be one of them.
Basically each tip is aimed not at learning something new, but rather at "looking like a pro". What also contributes to the injury is the author's writing style and "pro" reference in each paragraph. I find it ridiculous, but it surely attracts all those photo-wannabes that give this book positive reviews.Now let's look at the content. Each page consists of paragraph(s) of text with some "useful" tip and a picture to illustrate the tip. I find it hard to believe that I'm writing this, but I simply must save unsuspecting readers from frustration I experienced. Bogus pictures occupy exactly half of each page, so you could surely cut the book in half and convert it to nice pocket format without losing anything.The quality of tips in the book is of dubious nature. I would say that about half of them is just a common sense.
It also unlikely that you bought this book to be reminded that your work has to be backed up (several "tips" devoted to that).Now the tiny part of the book that actually contains some useful information is misdirected. For people that spend some time shooting (i'm not even talking about ubiquitous "pros" here) all the "tips" are self-evident and are on borderline with common sense. Most of the time pictures are pointless and/or of questionable artistic value. The funny part though is that author realizes (admits it in the book) that his humor attempts are "lame" at best but still insist of occupying at least 5% of the book with this trash. For beginners those tips do not make much sense because they lack the basics which are not covered by this book.In general this book is the worst disappointment I ever had (in books at least :).
Do not assume that pictures illustrate a technique, and you could learn anything from them. You will see plenty pictures of cameras, camera menus, camera controls, authors family and friends and even mindless clipart in cases where author was too lazy to actually come up with the photo. Spend your time and money elsewhere. The latter, especially, going to make you a better photographer, guaranteed.
This book is very good. I purchased this book because I recently got a Canon DSLR also from Amazon. Easy to read and very informative. I am a total beginner when it comes to using a SLR. So I got this one because of the gret reviews. I've also bought a couple of others, but like this one the best. I am planning on also getting the volumes 2 and 3 in the near future.
Ok, here we go, we talk about weddings, which get us to making sharp pictures, which leads to flashes and lenses, etc., etc. The book is not completely useless. However, al books of this author (yes, I've read them all) are lacking a basic order. Then, the wedding comes to his mind. While reading many things, I was thinking: "what is he talking about, is he out of his mind." then you realize: "ah, that was a joke". It looks like the author never bothered to put things together, simply writing about anything that comes to his mind.
Repetitions, repetitions, repetitions. You can "extract" a few tips from the book. etc. For example, he writes about sharp pictures, then, once he gets to a word "flash", he completely switches from the main subject and keeps writing about different kind of flashes you can get from one particular store. Then, while talking about flashes, he gets to white balance, or something else, and keeps talking about that totally different subject. The "jokes" are very distracting.
Silly.
A few added Adobe Photoshop tricks also round out the information in this slim how-to book.I would recommend this book for someone who already has taken a few good photographs and who is familiar with her own camera. Those were the ones framed and shaded in hues of green.
Scott Kelby is a great photographer and his photographs prove that. I had to buy this for a digital photography course.
It wouldn't have hurt to have added a few more technical descriptions of how certain tricks work.What I really enjoyed were his special tips at the bottom of many pages. Even I, as a long-standing amateur, picked up a few new tricks.I found his lame humor at the beginning of the book distracting, though.
Sure, he's a funny guy but anyone serious about learning all the tips of great photography may be annoyed at the wasted words. Another bonus was mentioning both Nikon and Canon features when there were differences between the two brands' terminology.
But for someone more determined to turn pro, there are more technical and just as simplified books out there.4+ stars
i bought this book for a friend who is "into" photography, yet didn't have any background on how film photography works vs. digital photography, film theory, etc. This book is really informative, has great illustrative step by steps,and gives the reader a good grasp. Very instructional,not hard to understand.
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