Best Book for Digital Photography

[patrice_bennett]

Hello,

 

I have a digital SLR and I'm looking to gain more knowledge as a whole on

digital photography and what the camera does. Reading the manual for the

camera is not quite enough, I'm looking for better explanations of what

settings to use, when to use them etc. Can anyone recommend a good read?

[Matt Laur]

Almost everything that matters (sensitivity - in the form of ISO setting instead of film speed, aperture, and shutter speed) is essentially the same as on a traditional SLR. The things you most need to know about how to put the camera to work are the same fundamentals that have always needed an understanding before you shoot well. Are you struggling with issues of exposure settings, or are you fighting with things that are specific to a digital camera, light white balance and file management?

[patrice_bennett]

A little bit of both to be honest, but more so with the light white balance and file management - e.g.: If I set the camera to jpg/fine/large - I get 300ppi - how can I get 72ppi?

[Matt Laur]

The ppi or dpi setting on a file is just a reference that is, or is not, used by some devices or processes for some sense of how resolution should be handled. The only thing that ACTUALLY matters is the real size of the image, in pixels-wide and pixels-tall. If you need to re-size an image for proper viewing online, the ppi/dpi setting means nothing, the only thing that matters is that you reduce the actual pixel dimensions to the size that you need. A typical onscreen image might be, say, 800x600 pixels. The image right out of your camera could easily be three or four times larger than that, or more. You'd usually use your photo editing software to alter the size of a COPY of the image file if you need a lower resolution version.

[patrice_bennett]

Thank you very much for your explanation. Let me just ask one more question: If I have my camera set to jpg/fine/large and the editing software gives a dimension of 3872X2592 at 300ppi - that means that I can get a 12.9 X 8.64 print without distortion, but what if I wanted an 11 x 14 - what then happens?

[Matt Laur]

An 11x14 is still going to look quite nice. I routinely have 11x14 images printed from my D200's images (the same size you describe), even after some cropping. The results are just fine.

 

I would recommend that you consider shooting in RAW, and only render JPGs when and as you need them. Once you get used to the workflow, you'll learn to be very glad you have the RAW files to work from. Things like white balance can be readily adjusted after the fact without torturing the image as destructively as you would when altering a JPG in the same way.

[hjoseph7]

Try one of those Kodak Series books. There is one on Digital Photography, but it's a little bit outdated. Well actually it is allot outdated. However the firt few chapters give you an indepth explanation on pixels, dpi, lpi, ppi. It's good theory and it might come in handy when you need to purchase a peice of equipment like a scanner, but it wont help you take better picures.

[patrice_bennett]

Thank you everyone for your responses, I appreciate them!

[ellis_vener_photography]

"Real World Digital Photography" second edition, by Eismann, Duggal and Gray. is the soup t o nuts primer you are seeking.

[J.W. Wall]

The above, and "Photography," London and Upton (e.g., see Photonet recommended books in Learn section). If possible, a good hands-on college course (for credit or not) may be your best way to learn the basics and how theory is applied.