The Digital Photography Book, Volume 1 [Kindle Edition]

Firstly... I love this book (or series of books!).

Having read some of the 1* reviews I felt the need to comment.

There is no doubt at all that this book WILL improve your digital photographs, and at the end of the day... that's all it sets out to do. The overall style of the book is very well written. Each page has a tip in it's own right, and you fly through it (I've read it twice making notes the second time!)

To comment on some of the critics;

1) R.e. the humour. Yes, the jokes are quite bad. But he knows they're quite bad, and even says they're quite bad and have to be tolerated. That's the whole point. Cracking an unfunny joke in the chapter intro doesn't make the tips following it any less interesting/relevant/good. He even says at the beginning... "Skip the chapter intros if you find my humour cringe-worthy" (I'm paraphrasing but you get the point). If you don't like it, and go on to read it, more fool you.

2) R.e. the brand plugging. The book is designed to make your photos look like a professional photographers photographs. Professional photographers use Nikon or Canon. If you want your photos to look like pros, you SOMETIMES need to buy Pro Equipment. If a professional photo was possible with an Olympus Point & Click, why would pros not just use Olympus Point & Clicks? You wouldn't buy a book called "How to drive around Silverstone at the same speed as a Pro Driver" then complain because it didn't tell you how to do it in a Ford Fiesta?! There is even a paragraph in which Scott points out why he uses Nikon & Canon as examples so much (far more eloquently than I just did!).

3) R.e. the 2nd & 3rd books. Due to the overwhelming success of this book, people emailed Scott and asked him to give them more details on [whatever], so he went about writing a sequel. That's it. There's no... "Leave out information so I can sell another book later", the man is giving you trade tips and hints, people wanted to know more, so he released another book. Very cynical approach to assume he deliberately worsened his first book to enable him to sell a sequel. What if the first hadn't have sold at all. Besides which... they're less than £7 each. That's £21 for all three. Value for money is incredible. Get a grip!

I think if the people that don't like this book had perhaps read the back before purchasing they would understand the whole concept of the book. Highly HIGHLY recommended. There's is no doubt that reading this book WILL improve your digital photos, and that's all you can really ask of him.

There are lots of big shiny books out there that tell you all about digital photography and while many of these are great books, they can be a little intimidating too.

Scott Kelby, author of many of the better photography boooks out there has now come up with the antidote. The Digital Photography Book is a mere 200 odd pages and is just slightly bigger than A5 in size yet contains a whole lot of useful information that will almost certainly improve anyone's photography.

Each page is a self-contained tip or concept, often with an inspiring image for illustration. The text is rarely more than a paragraph or two yet manages to get important and useful stuff covered concisely and clearly.

Taking for instance, a chapter on tips for getting sharp pictures. You get a page for tripods, ballheads, cable releases, self-timers, mirror lockup (for really sharp pictures), Image stabalization, aperature, lens quality, ISO, sharpening, pro-sharpening and steadier hand held shots. All in a few pages and without leaving you feeling short changed.

The rest of the book continues with coverage of flower photography, weddings, landscapes, portraits and so on. Unlike many digital photography books, the bulk of the information presented is aimed at getting the original photos right, not in fixing things in Photoshop. Best of all, as the cover notes, much of it applies to point-and-click cameras as well as Digital SLRs.

Another useful (albeit potentially expensive) side effect of this book is the discovery of all sorts of interesting accessories you could or indeed should be considering. Things like flashguns and tripods are pretty obvious but things like spirit levels, extension tubes and neutral density filters may be news to some. Certainly, for landscape photography, a graduated nuetral density filter is a must have.

Ok, I read the reviews, I umm'ed and ahh'ed and finally decided that having spent months trying to choose a camera, lens and accessories, buying a book really shouldn't be this difficult and just ordered both 1 & 2 together.
Yep, when you've been bombarded with strange numerical equations and figures after first delving into photography, someone who sounds like they're laughing at you and refusing to take you seriously is a pain in the backside and you want to throw their stupid book straight into the bath and kick it, or that could just be me.
However, after the first few pages of 'introduction' you do get down to the serious stuff. Kelby manages to cover every angle you possibly have a question about when you first begin using a DSLR and really speeds up your learning process. His tips are sometimes so simple and yet would have taken a lot of trial and error for one to come across, that's why it's useful that it's all there in one book.
Macro photography and flowers
Landscapes
Light (indoor/outdoor)
Portrait
Wedding
Animals etc.
Even though you may not be interested in every chapter, you will have a use for all of the different things that they teach you and it is a very easy read. I most appreciate the fact that I can just dip into this book without reading anything previous to the paragraph I need. That's what makes this book really useful.
Feel free to top up your knowledge with other books or Google as I do but this is a great on hand, light reference to take round with you and use when you need it.