Product Description

"Be a part of the revolution."
—Leo Laporte, TechTV

Shooting Digital is the authoritative guide to getting the most out of your digital camera. Noted photographer and best–selling author Mikkel Aaland has drawn on his 28 years of experience in the field and collected wisdom and images from more than 30 contributors, many of them professional photographers who shoot digital every day. The result is a wealth of pro tips, shooting techniques, and technical recommendations, accompanied by stunning photographs. Whether you′re a digital photographer honing your skills or a film photographer making the transition to digital, you′ll be inspired and equipped to get consistently great results.

Through straightforward explanation and illustrative examples you′ll learn how to:

• Use digital–specific techniques to take great pictures of people, events, sports, landscapes, buildings, and products
• Fully exploit the minimovie capabilities of your digital camera
• Recognize and compensate for the dreaded shutter release lag
• Use the LCD preview to turn portrait subjects into collaborators
• Create stunning panoramas and object movies
• Work with RAW data, the holy grail of digital photography
• Extend the tonal range of digital cameras
• Archive your digital images while on the road
• And much more...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #472021 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A digital camera is functionally identical to a traditional film camera in all respects except image storage, right? Not at all, and in Shooting Digital Mikkel Aaland shows exactly why. He shows why digital cameras--the point-and-shoot variety as well as fancier models meant for professional photographers--are overall neither better nor worse than cameras of older design, and goes on to show you how to take advantage of their special traits. He shows how to compensate for their shortcomings, too, notably shutter lag (for which he documents a useful testing procedure) and colour fringing. Though there's some coverage of creating animated GIFs, this book generally sticks to the shooting stage and leaves editing to other volumes.

Aaland never forgets that digital cameras should be more cameras than digital, and his book serves as an excellent photography text for hobbyists and aspiring professionals. The author's advice in this area is both technical (how to light a still life and how to best a strobe to eliminate shadows) and artistic (why kids should be encouraged to photograph other kids, and how you can use perspective to create weird effects). He's an accomplished photographer who obviously loves his work, and his enthusiasm for making art with a camera--and, for that matter, just playing with one--comes through brilliantly. --David Wall

Topics covered: photography--of objects, people, places, action, nature and other subjects--as accomplished with a modern digital camera. Emphasis falls on the relationship between camera and subject, as defined by focus, lighting, composition and motion. Further attention goes to image manipulation accomplished via camera settings (such as white balance, exposure and to post-shoot processing with image software). There's also nice coverage of the differences among various image file formats. --Robert Lawton, Amazon.com

Review
Major companies like Kodak and Nikon are abandoning the manufacture of film cameras and are producing affordable digitals, so it′s an ideal time for substantial manuals on their use to appear. Aaland was among the first to write such books when his Digital Photography was published in 1992. In this second edition of Shooting Digital, he has removed material that is no longer relevant (e.g., shutter–release lag) and added chapters on shooting and processing RAW data and on the digital renaissance in shooting in black and white. Highly recommended. (Library Journal, March 15, 2007)

"Renowned author Aaland takes photographers through an enjoyable but fluidly intellectual guide for self–improvement." (Digital Photographer)

From the Back Cover
"Be a part of the revolution."
— Leo Laporte, TechTV

Shooting Digital is the authoritative guide to getting the most out of your digital camera. Noted photographer and best–selling author Mikkel Aaland has drawn on his 28 years of experience in the field and collected wisdom and images from more than 30 contributors, many of them professional photographers who shoot digital every day. The result is a wealth of pro tips, shooting techniques, and technical recommendations, accompanied by stunning photographs. Whether you′re a digital photographer honing your skills or a film photographer making the transition to digital, you′ll be inspired and equipped to get consistently great results.

• Through straightforward explanation and illustrative examples you′ll learn how to:
• Use digital–specific techniques to take great pictures of people, events, sports, landscapes, buildings, and products
• Fully exploit the minimovie capabilities of your digital camera
• Recognize and compensate for the dreaded shutter release lag
• Use the LCD preview to turn portrait subjects into collaborators
• Create stunning panoramas and object movies
• Work with RAW data, the holy grail of digital photography
• Extend the tonal range of digital cameras
• Archive your digital images while on the road
• And much more...

Customer Reviews

Intermediates should buy it while it's still up to date!
You can't envy anyone trying to cover this vast and rapidly changing subject in just one book, but Aaland has done a pretty good job.

The book really aims at the intelligent beginner, freshly converting film photographer or intermediate digital camera user. A point and shoot merchant could gain some insight into what makes for a good composition, but your camera really needs to have manual controls to make the best use of the information provided.

The author is American so you have to ignore some of the spellings and references to little league baseball, but apart from a few camera model name differences on this side of the ocean, all the other info is relevant.

Aaland makes use of experts in various fields for tips and always gives links to web sites (including his own) for further reference. The only area the book was a bit thin on was the exact techniques used to manipulate images on your computer. Not really a surprise given that he has written other books on that subject!

If this sound like a book to suit you then get it now (2004), because in three years time nobody will even remember what a SmartMedia card was!

excellent for beginners
Having just got my first digital camera I needed some instruction on how best to operate one to achieve good results, this book outlines everything you will need to know about aperture,shutter speeds,exposures etc along with how to shoot using different techniques to get pro looking shots without too much effort.It is well put together,well illustrated and printed to a high standard.This is an excellent tutorial for those wanting to learn how to use cameras with manual controls not staight forward point and shoot,for this it would be overkill,so if your camera has manual shutter control,apperture and focus then I would say BUY IT NOW,a fantastic tool!

Not the best you can buy.
My actual rating for this book is 2.5 stars. Here is why:
For a book about photography, it has very uninspiring photos. They do demonstrate the points the author is trying to convey, but the photos are average at best. I am certainly not a pro, but a lot of my snapshots look better than most of the photos in this book. While the author does a rather good job explaining different factors that contribute to exposure, his tips are not of "pro" level:
"Position yourself and your camera in relation to the subject carefully, and with forethought" (46).
"Learn to anticipate the right moment to shoot through careful observation and knowledge of the subject" (46). I personally do not find this sort of advice very useful. Throughout the book (aimed at beginner), the author devotes a great deal of time to discussing electronic strobes and soft boxes (equipment which is not readily available to a beginner), while not enough place is given to working with natural light. I don't know about you, but I have no undiffused strobe of medium height nor do I have an interest in purchasing one. When discussing processing, he avoids going to detail and constantly self-markets his other book, Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions.

You do learn something from this book, but I had much better and more useful experiences with other works in this genre. If you are looking for a comprehensive guide to digital photography (beginner or intermediate), I would look somewhere else.