Product Description

Bryan Peterson's previous book, Understanding Exposure, was a runaway success and has sold over a quarter of a million copies worldwide Now, in this companion volume, he goes into one aspect of exposure - shutter speed - in depth. A whole series of examples of the same shot taken with the wrong shutter speed and then with the right one illustrate the crucial difference the correct choice can make, especially when dealing with the challenges presented by a fast-moving subject or poor lighting conditions. With the help of this book photographers at all levels of experience and using both digital and film formats will quickly develop the confidence to deal with techniques for freezing motion, blurring it, panning or zooming, including using Photoshop to render motion effects. Bryan Peterson, also the author of Understanding Exposure (9780817463007), Learning to See Creatively and Understanding Digital Photography, is a professional photographer and teacher of photography. He writes a column for the American magazine Popular Photography and runs workshops and online photography courses on PPSOP.com. He has homes in both the US and France.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26841 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

Informative but flawed
This book does exactly what is says on the tin but there is a downside. It is written by an American author and each photographic example (of which there are many) is precursorsed by an annoying prologue that gives you the story behind each photograph. It is very schmaltzy, you find out he has two daughters, who his wife is, and numerous other things that although is nice it really has no place in a book of this type. It is very American, which can grate after a while. Contrast this with books written by the likes of Michael Freeman, highly informative and entertaining without being annoying at the same time

The good news is that if you can stomach the style there are some good tips in here. The sections on fast shutter speed hold no surprises, there is very little that can be said on that subject. Peterson makes a good job of exploring slower shutter speed and demonstrates how different levels of blur can be achieved. He does this in a jargon free manner that does inspire confidence to try out some of his techniques, he makes them sound easy and achievable. To his credit he does seem to have an ability to explain techniques and inspire yo to try them out.

There is a filler chapter regarding composition at the end which feels a bit tacked on. Also, I feel that he could have tackled really long exposures, he seems frightened to go beyond 15 seconds, I guess this is due to the limitations of digital at long exposures but there must be something he could explore at these extended shutter speed. Even something like using body caps for making digital pinhole cameras would have been welcome.

I feel this book is a solid grounding in the craft of shutter speed selection but there could have been a lot more said about the subject.