The Digital Photography Companion
Book Review

By Dale Farris, Reviews Coordinator Golden Triangle PC Club April 2008 Overview Are you ready to take photos that reflect your creative spirit, rather than just another set of snapshots? Then you want this book in your camera bag. Well-organized so you can look up topics quickly, The Digital Photography Companion gives you creative tips and technical advice for taking top-notch digital photos in a wide range of conditions, and for a variety of occasions. In other words, this book will help you make pictures that look better than everyone else's. Professional photographer and teacher Derrick Story, whose online tips and podcasts at The Digital Story (www.thedigitalstory.com) have made him a popular photography blogger, gives you plenty of examples of how to capture great shots of people, places, landscapes, and more. He also provides a complete summary on camera features, tips for printing, sharing your images, and an overview of photo management applications. Table of Contents The 5 chapters include: What is It? Choose the right camera (DSLRs, compact cameras, or hybrids) and get a rundown on all of the typical features they offer, such as face detection, image stabilizers, diopter adjustment, focus assist light, RAM buffer, and more. How Does it Work? This A-Z guide of digital camera controls explains everything from Aperture Value (Av) Mode and Autoexposure to White Balance, the Zoom/Magnify Control, and everything in between. Shoot Like a Pro Advice for a variety of photographic adventures, such as capturing existing light portraits, creating powerful landscape images, and shooting fireworks, underwater portraits, infrared photos, and more, along with lighting and filter tricks. I've Taken Great Pictures, Now What? You get complete advice for sharing your photos, converting from color to black & white and more, plus an overview of photo management applications, from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to Apple iPhoto. Printing Made Easy Printing doesn't have to be a painful experience. Learn various options, including direct printing without a computer, ordering out, and selecting the right inkjet printer for home (and what to do with it once you get it there.). You also get an appendix with Quick Reference Tables, as well as other useful tables scattered throughout the book. The Digital Photography Companion offers you friendly advice so you can try techniques that may never have occurred to you -- approaches that will bring you more of what you're looking for when you click the shutter: Great looking pictures! The appendix includes a super assortment of tables providing technical information on exposure compensation, flash mode settings, white balance settings, metering modes with explanations, camera modes with explanations, exposure starting points for sunset and astrophotography, megapixels to print size reference, scene mode information, color temperature chart in Kelvin, number of pictures to memory card capacity, and metadata for the photographs included in the book. Target Readers This super book is an excellent introduction to the world of digital photography, and will appeal to readers who have had some experience with their digital camera and are ready to embark on more sophisticated uses of their hardware. The book is succinct in its approach and the author makes sure to not overload the reader with extensive, detailed material. Instead, the focus is on the most common, most likely questions asked by digital photographers, especially amateurs who use their digital camera as a hobby or for fun. This title also nicely serves as an introductory companion to Ken Milburn's Digital Photography: Expert Techniques, also available from O'Reilly. Book Contents 230 pages; full color example photographs (matte paper); figures and tip sidebars; appendix; index Derrick Story About the Author Derrick Story is the digital media evangelist for O'Reilly. His experience includes more than 20 years as a photojournalist, managing editor for O'Reilly Network, and a speaker for IDG, PMA, and Santa Fe Workshops. He is the author of Digital Photography Hacks, Digital Photography Pocket Guide, 3rd Ed., and his latest, The Digital Photography Companion. He coauthored iPhoto: The Missing Manual with David Pogue. Derrick likes to keep his shooting skills sharp by running his photography business, Story Photography. You can listen to his photo podcasts and read his tips at The Digital Story (www.thedigitalstory.com). Aperture fans might want to check out his co-authored video training on www.lynda.com: Aperture 1.5 Beyond the Basics. ISBN February 2008 - First Edition ISBN 10: 0-596-51766-1 ISBN 13: 978-0-596-51766-3 List Price $24.99 $24.99 CAN Publisher Marsee Henon marsee@oreilly.com O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North Sebastopol, California 95472 707-827-7000 707-827-7114 800-998-9938 FAX 707-829-0104 www.oreilly.com