AdamW
02-02-2007, 10:09 AM
Peterson, Bryan. Understanding Digital Photography: Techniques for Getting Great Pictures. New York: Amphoto Books, 2005. 0-8174-37967.
Readers of these forums will recognize Bryan Peterson from his book Understanding Exposure, which is frequently and enthusiastically recommended. And it is a great book: clear and concise writing with a relaxed tone, wonderful examples, logical organization, important points are repeated, etc. Exposure is so good, in fact, that it is with even more disappointment that I read Understanding Digital Photography.
Understanding Digital Photography is organized into three sections. First is an introduction to the technical aspects of digital cameras and digital photography. In the second section, Peterson covers aperture, shutter speed, lighting, and composition. And in the third section, he discusses the post-processing with Photoshop.
The most valuable section is the second, which reads like a condensed version of Understanding Exposure and another Peterson book, Learning to See Creatively. Like those books, this section has lots of information presented in plain language and illustrated with excellent examples (including his cute daughters and lovely wife as models.) However, while they provide a good review for readers who’ve read Peterson’s other books, these chapters are too brief to give the material—and the author’s skill and expertise—the space it deserves.
It’s the first and the third sections that are problematic. Peterson may be a great photographer and an excellent teacher, but his expertise is clearly in photography, not computer science (and his publisher needs to invest more effort in copy editing and fact-checking) and that shows in the first section. In some cases, Peterson makes simple mistakes, such as using “megabyte” when he must mean “gigabyte” in a discussion of memory cards. In other cases, he reads as if he was writing in 1999 instead of 2005. For example, he talks about compact flash cards instead of the more general and inclusive term, memory cards. And in some cases, he’s just plain wrong, as when he claims—more than once—that simply opening and closing .jpeg files leads to loss of image quality. And that error leads to some odd advice: he recommends saving a copy of every image as a .tiff file. Now, hard drive space is relatively cheap these days, but .tiffs are huge, and if you shoot in RAW as Peterson suggests, you can more sensibly save the smaller RAW files instead.
The third section has Peterson explaining the basics of Photoshop post-processing: sharpening, adjusting color, panoramas, etc. While there are no real glaring errors, the material in this section is covered in greater detail in lots of other excellent books—such as those by Scott Kelby.
If you’ve never read a Peterson book, this might’ve been an okay place to start, if it weren’t for the errors. If you’ve read his other books, the material that’s repeated could be a welcome and useful review, but probably isn’t worth $24.95USD. In the end, I’m unable to recommend this book, which is a disappointment, because I’m a big fan of Peterson’s other work.
Readers of these forums will recognize Bryan Peterson from his book Understanding Exposure, which is frequently and enthusiastically recommended. And it is a great book: clear and concise writing with a relaxed tone, wonderful examples, logical organization, important points are repeated, etc. Exposure is so good, in fact, that it is with even more disappointment that I read Understanding Digital Photography.
Understanding Digital Photography is organized into three sections. First is an introduction to the technical aspects of digital cameras and digital photography. In the second section, Peterson covers aperture, shutter speed, lighting, and composition. And in the third section, he discusses the post-processing with Photoshop.
The most valuable section is the second, which reads like a condensed version of Understanding Exposure and another Peterson book, Learning to See Creatively. Like those books, this section has lots of information presented in plain language and illustrated with excellent examples (including his cute daughters and lovely wife as models.) However, while they provide a good review for readers who’ve read Peterson’s other books, these chapters are too brief to give the material—and the author’s skill and expertise—the space it deserves.
It’s the first and the third sections that are problematic. Peterson may be a great photographer and an excellent teacher, but his expertise is clearly in photography, not computer science (and his publisher needs to invest more effort in copy editing and fact-checking) and that shows in the first section. In some cases, Peterson makes simple mistakes, such as using “megabyte” when he must mean “gigabyte” in a discussion of memory cards. In other cases, he reads as if he was writing in 1999 instead of 2005. For example, he talks about compact flash cards instead of the more general and inclusive term, memory cards. And in some cases, he’s just plain wrong, as when he claims—more than once—that simply opening and closing .jpeg files leads to loss of image quality. And that error leads to some odd advice: he recommends saving a copy of every image as a .tiff file. Now, hard drive space is relatively cheap these days, but .tiffs are huge, and if you shoot in RAW as Peterson suggests, you can more sensibly save the smaller RAW files instead.
The third section has Peterson explaining the basics of Photoshop post-processing: sharpening, adjusting color, panoramas, etc. While there are no real glaring errors, the material in this section is covered in greater detail in lots of other excellent books—such as those by Scott Kelby.
If you’ve never read a Peterson book, this might’ve been an okay place to start, if it weren’t for the errors. If you’ve read his other books, the material that’s repeated could be a welcome and useful review, but probably isn’t worth $24.95USD. In the end, I’m unable to recommend this book, which is a disappointment, because I’m a big fan of Peterson’s other work.