Product Description

For serious amateur photographers who already shoot perfectly focused, accurately exposed images but want to be more creative with a camera, here's the book to consult. More than seventy techniques, both popular and less-familiar approaches, are covered in detail, including advanced exposure, bounced flash and candlelight, infrared, multiple images, soft-focus effects, unusual vantage points, zooming, and other carefully chosen ways to enhance photographs. The A-Z format make sit easy for readers to find a specific technique, and each one is explained in jargon-free language. Top Tips for each technique help readers achieve superb results, even on the first attempt.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #135 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

Good on basics but could be better
This book is written in a clear, user friendly style and the author sounds like a really nice person, but to tell the truth the advice he gives about exposure I learned by spending about a half hour with my friend when I was 15. And it's a lot better to learn this stuff while doing it than from a book. I guess the photos are good examples, but not any better than most people's who know the very basics of aperture, speed, ISO settings, and depth of field. What I don't understand is why the author--who is a pro--failed to mention the role of tripods in long exposure shots, so while he says that a 1 sec. exposure at let's say f16 is the same as f4 at 1/30 sec., he doesn't mention that a 1 sec exposure opens yourself to camera shakiness & blurring. There's a page on using a tripod, but nothing specific. He doesn't spend much time at all on explaining focal lengths of film vs. digital cameras, which is also important. I only mention these things because I'd hate to see someone take a bunch of photos without this knowledge and end up with unexpected consequences.

Great book, missed opportunity
After having read several books on photography, this it the one that has clearly shown me the use of the different exposures. Peterson dwells on what each aperture range, and shutter speed range, is good for. There are many photos in the book, and next to each, a short explanation of how it was taken, and what settings were chosen.
Peterson makes a great teacher.

There is a weakness in this book, in my view, and that is the missed chance to explain a bit of the optics and physics. Not that this needed to be a technical book, but a few diagrams and a few numbers would have gone a long way to dispel some confusion.

For instance, Peterson at one point describes "stops", the settings in the camera that double (or half) the exposure. For instance, a jump in shutter speed from 1/30s to 1/60s is one stop. So is a jump from ISO 400 to ISO 800. For apertures, though, the numbers look like f/4, f/5.6, f/8, much less intuitive.

It would not have killed the author to explain that to double the surface area of the aperture, one needs to multiply the diameter by the square root of 2 (approx. = 1.4). This is simple geometry, available to most.
Then it would be clear that f/5.6 = 4 * 1.4, is one stop down in exposure from f/4.

Peterson explains exposure by comparing it to a faucet. If you open it wider, more water comes out, and less time is required to fill your glass. OK, but most people would have understood that if you let in twice as much light, you require half as much time to record an image on the sensor.
Depth of field and it's dependence on aperture is VERY easy to explain with a simple diagram. Another missed chance.

Another example: ISO. The metaphor here is that ISO is like bees, and more ISO equals more bees collecting honey, so they get done quicker. So why does higher ISO increase the noise and granularity of your photo?

If Peterson had included a bit of technical information, I would have recommended this book as the best one-stop resource. As it stands, I can just say it's very very good, but you need supplements. Kudos.

Love it!
I love photography, and have traded my "hobby" for a "job" and books like this help me take better pictures, therefore making my customers happier. These type of books are very helpful.