How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera 2/e [Paperback]

At first I was a little disappointed with my new camera, it was fine in its automatic mode but I only ever got rubbish photos from the plethora of manual settings. Having read the user guide I was able to understand what the buttons did mechanically, but I had no idea why or when to use them. In the end I decided to buy 'How to do Everything with Your Digital Camera'. The name filled me with fears of a rubbish 'Idiots Guide' style book, but I was spurred on by the positive reviews on Amazon, and I have now decided to add one of my own.

For some reason I expected the book to be in colour so I was a shade disappointed that it's all black and white, except for a small colour insert. But when I actually sat down and read it, it was like somebody had been listening to all the questions I'd been asking myself about my new camera and provided all the answers (I'm currently checking for bugs so be warned Mr Johnson).

Going back to the days before I read this book I'm ashamed to say that I genuinely thought my camera was broken. When taking macro photos I could only ever get a wafer thin portion of my subject in focus. Having read this book I realise that by decreasing my aperture size I can fix the problem completely. It's absolutely packed with these little facts and it seemed like every page had me thinking "Oooooh, so THAT'S what I've been doing wrong".

If you read the beginning of the last paragraph and thought to yourself "Duh! That's sooo obvious". Then this book is probably too basic for you. But, if you thought "Macro? Is that the button with the tulip on it?" I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I have read it through from cover to cover and I feel that I now have the correct foundations in place to not only take significantly better pictures right away, but also to build a real understanding of the subject in the future.

It's clearly written by someone who knows his subject, and refreshingly he let's you know just what he thinks with clear no nonsense advice on what to do, what to use, what to buy and what to avoid. The scope of the book spans advice for prospective first time digicam buyers, through to how cameras work, picture composition, various camera controls & effects, the PC darkroom, printing etc. The book really does cover everything that I wanted to know and a good few things I hadn't really thought about. The technical bits are invaluable. For the first time I actually understand all about file formats for example. I also enjoyed the advice on composition which is straightforward but really does transform your picture quality.

There's good advice on managing and manipulating your images on the PC which are generally illustrated by use of Paint Shop Pro, though lessons are easily applied to other image processing packages.

It's an easy read, when I first got it I spent three days reading it cover to cover and it now provides a great up to date reference for all areas of my digital photography.

Down side? I spotted a couple of typos and some references to suppliers and prices are American but you really won't notice.

All in all an excellent book which will help you get much more from your digital camera.

I would not say that you'll learn all the tricks of digital photography from this book -- it is not entirely comprehensive and I finished the whole book after two sits. However, it is very intelligently written, even with a really good sense of humor, and it covers all topics in a really easy-to-understand way. Given the size of the volume you hardly miss any content - it does all the basics of photography, composition, macro photos, night shots, tricks and basic image manipulation, even how to catalog your images. All issues are full with very practical and non-trivial advice of a very experienced digicam user. (How to use a beansack as a tripod? Avoidinig overexposition with macro photos, etc).

This book must be very helpful for abosulte beginners in photography. However, I did quite a bit of 35mm photography and I have bought my first decent digicam a few months ago - 5 megapix is already comparable to 35mm (if you don't mind the contrast rates) and it is now beyond $500. The book always makes refereces for 35mm camrea users, which I have found very useful. I believe that even experienced digicam users will find very good tips in this book, and also may find the missing links if they don't quite understand all the functions of their over-intelligent camera.

Following expert advice I have made a very good choice with my digicam, but if you're considering to buy a new one, reading this book will give you guidance to now what to ask for in the shop.

All in all: the 400+ pages may be misleading due to the huge number of illustrative images, but if you do not expect an all-comprehensive digicam bible, you'd hardly find any better companion to your camera manual. If Johnson did the 1000 pages small print all the tricks of digicams, I would buy that without hesitation, too.