digital photography

This is a superbly written book. It covers everything of relevance to digital photography including things that many books skip like copyright infringement, & shooting etiquette. Scanners, monitors, software, computers are all covered and explained as to how they relate to photography. The text is aided with tons of great pictures, and diagrams explaining key concepts.

A large section of the book is dedicated to digital manipulation, but instead of giving specific instructions on how to execute photoshop commands, the general problem is explained and the general solution is given. Like if the background is too distracting, try desaturating it. For me this was great, I appreciated the ideas and suggestions more than what could have been wasted space on beginner photoshop tutorials. So the book doesn't teach photoshop, good for some, bad for others.

Generally the book is full of a lot of technical information and creative ideas for taking & making more interesting photos. I thought it was great.

I bought this book knowing nothing about photography, as I'm sure many others will. I wanted to learn about the technical aspects of digital photography and how they affect the image (such as exposure, aperture, focal length, depth of field, etc.) I already had a sufficient understanding of computers.

Needless to say, I shouldn't have bought this book. I don't know what Mr. Ang was trying to accomplish with this one, but it seems to me that he gathered every topic that is even remotely related to digital photography, all the while ignoring the relative importance of these topics and what they contribute to the book as a whole.

The first chapter is the culprit, which is unfortunate because I might have spent some real time with the book otherwise. In it, Ang begins by spoon-feeding us information about which digital camera to buy. The problem is, how many people are going to buy this book before they buy a camera? And how significant would Ang's 20-word blurbs be in the process anyways? And how long is the information going to be current? And ... right.

After that, Ang completes the process of diving off the deep end, and gives us all modes of useless information ranging from the innards of LCD monitors to how inkjet printers work and how to adjust your computer chair. I most definitely could not believe how ridiculous the first chapter turned out to be.

After the first couple chapters, we're given photography techniques for many, many different scenarios. If this book has a selling point, those techniques would probably be it. Unfortunately, I'm more interested in the practical side of photography than the artistic. Nice photos, though. For each scenario, Ang basically says, "This photo turned out nice because I did this to it. You can do this too."

This (somewhat) useful content is sandwiched between the aforementioned first chapter and even more useless babble (like how to protect your computer from viruses). Reading the book was emotionally draining.

And I still don't know what f-stops are. Please avoid.

This was my second photography book purchase from Amazon in a month and again, the book is very good, the price is great (good bye Barnes & Noble) and again, Amazon's service is EXCELLENT !!!