I am as the subject says looking for recommendations for books that will give me a good grounding in the basics of photography, digital for preferance. I do realise that there is no substitue for getting out there and taking lots and lots of pictures, But I would like something that will help me avoid some of the basic and common mistakes, and give me a good basic understanding of photography in general, but since I will be using a digital camera something that concentrates on this area would be best. So what are your recommendations for books, or is it just lots, and lots, and lots.... of photos ;-)

lots of both. Shoot, read The Art of Night Photography, then shoot more, then read another book, then shoot more, then read any other photography book and the shoot some more then...

The idea is to learn your camera and develop your own "eye". stealing ideas and techniques is acceptable as long as you use them to develop YOUR view and your own creativity. In other words don't try to build a better mousetrap. Just learn how to build your own.

Magick Michael

Message edited on: 11/10/2004 23:11

Well I have lots of photo books. Going back to ones that only talk about darkrooms,lol. I also have some very news ones that only talk about digital. Well I have one that might help you,its got good advice for basics,as well as goes over a good bit of the photo software out their,and some basics on them. Its called "Encyclopedia of Digital Photography". Now depending on what type of photos you like to take,you can find a decent book on that type in digital. As for me I have a book on nature photography with a digital camera. So just go to a book store and look at the photo section and you can find lots of digital ones.

This may be old school - and may be biased towards nature and macro photography - but these are quite simply the best books I've read as far as the "basics" of photography: John Shaw's "The Nature Photographer's Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques" and "Closeups in Nature". These two books excel in the description of the basics foundations of photography - metering, "zone placement", how to run tests before shooting something important, and gobs of additionals - all presented in an easy to understand, plain English way - he presents it in such a way as to make you go "Duh - of Course!". After I read his first book, my photography improved....well, what I was doing before really couldn't qualify as photography. In all seriousness, either one of these books WILL get you technically proficient enough to excel at the craft and give a good platform to begin developing your own style with the control needed to predict the outcome of your exposures. (Yes, they're that good - follow his guidelines, and out of a 36 exposure roll, you will get 36 technically correctly exposed images - (he also gives a slew of aesthetic recommendations and starting guidelines was well!) If your photography doesn't improve 100%, I'll pay for one of the books!!! (seriously!) Wolf

In my opinion, it's a fallacy perpatrated by the publishing houses that digital photography is somehow different than film photography. They are one in the same. The techniques for film photography and digital are the same. Where digital is different from film is not in the taking of the image, but in the processing.

That said, I'd recommend that you get a good, solid photography book to set your photography foundation. A book like "Photography" by London and Upton (think it's up to 7th or 8th edition now) and/or "The Confused Photographer's Guide to Photographic Exposure and the Simplified Zone System" by Farzad.

Once you have a good base for photography and with the help of your camera's manual, you'll be able to then understand where -your- digital camera's exposure latitude lies (it will probably be somewhere between slide film and print film) and how to deal with it.

Now what you need to add to this knowledge for digital is how to correctly process your images. For that, go for books that are specifically for processing files. All in one digital photography books usually aren't worth the paper they're printed on. You usually either get good photography technique but poor processing information or vice versa. If you have photoshop, I'd recommend books like "Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers" by Scott Kelby (they also make them for Photoshop 7 and I think 6) and/or "Photographers Guide to Photoshop" by Thomas.

I would also recommend reading up on color management and correction ideas and techniques. I liked "The Complete Guide to Digital Color Correction" by Michael Walker with Neil Barstow and "Real World Color Management" by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting.

What you're going to find though is that what can be really important is to find a book written in a way that you can personally understand. I've found many books that had good information, but the way it was presented just didn't work for me.

Good luck!

-=>Donald

I did have a reply to everyone that was so filled with wit, inteligence and thoughtful insight, that it would have caused all women who read it to want my children, and all men to want to be my best friend. But alas Renderosity seems to of eaten it and it is now lost for all time :-) So instead I will have to just say thank you to everyone for your help, I shortly have some of the books that have been recomended, and they should hopefully help me avoid a few beginers mistakes, and more importantly when I ask for help I'll be able to understand the answers. Thank you agin. Paul

Paul - A yes, the infamous eating of messages that the forum does. Pain in the butt because it's almost always a long message (because of how long it takes you to write it). I've gotten in the habit of selecting my entire message and copying it before I hit the POST button. That way, if it's eaten, I just open the originalmessage again and can paste the message back in. As for beginner's mistakes, don't worry. Even with all the books you'll still make those. :) Heck, if I can get away with making only 1 mistake each time I shoot I'm happy. :) -=>Donald

DHolman - I refuse to belive that I wont make any mistakes, in fact I have found over the years that I've learned more from fixing my mistakes than I ever did from blind luck getting something right ;-) But that said I would like to avoid as many of the beginners "I've got a camera just look at the pictures I took!" well mistakes maybe too harsh a word, but I did that type of thing when I first discovered Poser and 3d rendering it's what I call my Plastic People period. And I'd like to keep that sort of thing to as short a time as I can possibly manage, if only for the sake of everyone I'll be showing the pictures to. ;-)