Book Review: Michael Freeman’s Top Digital Photography Tips

There are many books on the market that offer a collection of tips for the digital photographer. Not all of them are worth reading. The book reviewed here is different and I think is one of the better tip collections on the market.

This is not a book for the complete beginner. You should at least know some basic terms like aperture, ISO or shutter speed.

The book is divided into 9 chapters.

Chapter one covers the basics. Some of the advice here may seam trivial like to shoot RAW or to just shoot when you see something interesting – instead of waiting and missing the shot. But it’s worth reading through the tips as the author has good arguments in most tips.

Chapter two covers exposure, something many photographers have problems with. The author covers important topics here like dynamic range and how to find out what the dynamic range of your camera is or how to judge the dynamic range of your subject. I also liked the tips on histograms and how to shoot for the highlights.

Chapter three covers color with topics like how to make white balance simple, color contrast, hot to shoot for black-and-white and more.

Chapter four is about technical details. Here, Michael Freeman explains how to best check for dust on your sensor, how to clean it or how to check if a picture is sharp. He also explains proper hand holding techniques. Many beginning and intermediate photographers may think they already know how to handhold a camera but I definitely learned something new here. Wrong hand holding technique probably leads to more out of focus pictures than anything else. Other tips are how to weather proof your camera or how to handle your camera in cold weather.

Chapter five covers composition. Composition is complex and easily a topic for a whole book alone. So in this chapter it is not possible to completely cover photographic position. But the author manages to explain many important points like how to look for rhythm or how to apply verticals or curves.

Chapter six is a rather specific chapter and it covers stitching. The author explains what possibilities are there for stitching and how to photograph a scene to get the most out of the stitching process. If you plan to do a lot of stitching, you will find great advice here. If you haven’t considered stitching an option so far, this chapter may give you some interesting new ideas.

Chapter seven explains how to use multiple shoots to get the best out of one picture, for example by blending exposures or using HDR technique to increase the dynamic range or to get rid of noise.

Chapter eight covers photography in low light and how to best deal with and avoid noise.

The last chapter covers some basic digital processing techniques. Of course this is not a complete Photoshop or Lightroom manual but has some great ideas in it.

Conclusion:
I like the book and I although I already know many of the topics covered in the book, I nonetheless learned a lot and also got some new ideas for topics I thought I had already understood completely.
The images throughout the book are great for explaining the theory in the text and are always beautiful to look at. But Michael Freeman is not only a very skilled photographer but also a great writer. The text is always interesting to read and easy to follow.
I highly recommend this book to beginning and intermediate photographers and I think even professionals can find something interesting in the book.

Buy the book from amazon:
(The book has different coves in Europe and the US but it is the same book)

amazon.com	amazon.co.uk	amazon.de