Digital Photography For Dummies

The bestselling full-color beginner's guide--500,000 copies sold in previous editions--now updated The digital photography revolution shows no signs of slowing down: fully half of all households in the U.S.

If you are fairly comfortable with the concept of photography but find the digital part a stumbling block, Digital Photography for Dummies should get you over the hump. Julie Adair King, a photographer and graphics-software specialist, deftly explains such concepts as resolution, f-stop, and compression.

King is also refreshingly up-front about the differences between film-based and digital photography, spelling out the shortcomings of the latter in the early pages of the book. Her advice, from the most basic to the more advanced aspects of the field, is well thought out and simple without being condescending. She informs readers, for example, that you needn't use high pixel resolutions simply for placing images on a Web page. Such tips come as a relief to fledgling photographers on a budget, or novices who may be led to believe they have to use the highest-quality settings at all times.

Aside from the technical concerns of working with the camera and computer, King also provides sound tips on composition and lighting. And since retouching is one of the principal benefits of digital photography, King spends a fair amount of time discussing photo-editing software. And while most of the examples are in black and white, the most important examples are included in a 16-page colour plate section in the middle of the book.

For those of you considering jumping into the world of digital photography, you will be hard pressed to find a better guide to getting started than Digital Photography for Dummies. --John Frederick Moore, Amazon.com