‘What digital photography book should I buy?’

I get asked this quite a bit by readers and while I’ve read quite a few good ones am always on the look out for more recommended resources. So I thought I’d open up the question to readers – what digital photography books have you found most helpful? Leave your recommendations and reader reviews in comments below.

To start the conversation I thought I’d post a reader review of The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby. This review was left in our forums by forum member ny156uk who won this book in a competition here at DPS. I hope you find it helpful.

The Review

The book is set as if you are a buddy of Scott’s out on a shoot. Each page is another tip/’technique’ so you get headings like “When to Shoot Flowers” or “What to Shoot in Bad Weather”. The book doesn’t explain ‘technical’ information about how cameras work/why X creates a small depth-of-field etc. instead it focuses on what settings/things you need to do to capture a specific look.

Throughout the book there is light-hearted humour. This appears to be an attempt to make the book less reference-y. I quite like the less formal approach, but imagine for some the humour may diminish the otherwise clear writing style.

Each chapter spans a specific area covering off the usual (weddings, landscapes, sports, nature, flowers, travel and portraits). It also has a ‘photo recipes’ section with several very beautiful photos, each containing a breakdown of what compositional elements/features make the shot and how to replicate it.

Throughout the book you are presented with short snappy stories from the perspective of a pro, situations they have gotten into and some rather unique little tips (there is a photo showing a method of wrapping your camera-strap around your arm that is said to achieve a sturdier grip for hand-held shots).

Top things I learnt from The Digital Photography Book:

It has been a few days now since I asked readers to nominate which Digital Camera Manufacturer is best.

By no means have we arrived at any solid conclusions (and I wouldn’t expect us to) and by no means is the conversation over (you’re more than welcome to keep having your say) however I thought it would be interesting to do a little analysis of the conversation so far and have come up with the following graph which is an attempt at observing what the trend is so far in conversation.

It was a difficult process to do as we have over 50 opinions already expressed and many of them contain numerous ‘votes’ (my fault for making the topic so broad) but the following is an indication of what I’m personally observing in the conversation.

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Reader Discussion Time.

Which digital camera manufacturer is best?

OK – before we start World War III with this discussion, let me set a few ground rules.

1. Be constructive - while simple responses of ‘Canon Rules’ or ‘I love Nikon’ might be easy – tell us WHY you like a particular manufacturer.
2. Respect each other’s opinions - ultimately there’s no right or wrong answer here – different aspects of the different manufacturers will appeal to different people. Argue your case strongly if you like – but let others hold their own opinions also
3. Give examples - tell us about the digital cameras that you’re talking about if you’d like. The more information and the more specific it is – the more we’ll all learn.

Feel free to have fun with this discussion

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I don’t tend to read a lot of digital photography magazines but recently while sitting in an airport terminal bought myself a copy of the UK Digital Photo Magazine which had a good comparison test of 50mm portrait lenses.

The 50mm focal length is a personal favorite of mine so this was a test that interested me. I love the 50mm range both because on a DSLR with crop factor coming into play it’s the equivalent of a 75-80mm lens (which allows for getting in nice and close to your subject without them feeling like you’re sitting in their lap). Many of them are also really cheap, quite fast and of a high quality (as the test showed).

So which 50mm portrait lens was best according to Digital Photo Magazine? Here’s how they ranked them:

• Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM (pictured)
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
• Olympus 50mm f/2.0 Macro ED
• Pentax 50mm Macro f/2.8
• Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro
• Sony 50mm f/1.4
• Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/1.4 ZF

“I’ve just bought a Canon EOS 400D and have been using an old 256MB Compact Flash memory card with it but it’s not big enough for me – what size and type should I buy?” – Samantha.

It’s amazing how affordable memory has become in the last few years. I remember just a couple of years back paying $1 per megabyte (and more) when I got my DSLR. These days by comparison memory is cheap!

There are a couple of factors that I generally consider when buying a memory card for my camera – Size and Speed. Let me briefly tackle each.

Size

The temptation with prices as they currently are is to simply rush out and buy the card with the most memory. These days this can mean you could well come back with an 8 gig card. However unless you’re going to be taking some long trips without the ability to download your shots while away this might be overkill. Here are a few considerations when it comes to capacity of memory cards: