Too Comprehensive
Customer Rating: 
There's a wide range of new digital single lens reflex users from those who just want to put the camera to their eye, press a button and see a photograph appear from somewhere to those who anticipate making photography a serious hobby and want to control every step of the process from the first idea for a picture until the last click of a printer. This makes it almost impossible for any one book for beginners to satisfy every one of them.
"40 Digital SLR Techniques" is a book that tries to satisfy all of them and may ultimately satisfy none. The title itself is a misnomer, perhaps designed to fit in with a series of books called "40...Techniques". Rather than providing tips on digital SLRs, this book tries to take the new digital SLR user every step of the way from describing the characteristics of digital SLRs to sharpening images in Photoshop. It not only describes digital camera features but also accessories like lenses and tripods. Chapters are devoted to photographing people and sports and shooting still lifes, nature and landscapes. There are also chapters on storing and sharing images, using raw files and Photoshop editing.
I liked the fact that the author tried to include everything he thought a new digital SLR photographer might want to know. He did explain briefly that histograms created by the camera could be used to control exposure, but like so much else, he skipped over this matter so quickly that one might have to reread the material several times in conjunction with a camera's instruction manual to understand how to use histograms. Moreover whole areas of interest to even the most basic of beginners, like composition, are not even covered. I thought that the author failed to assign priorities for what he should cover. Certainly some mention of composition, like describing the rule of thirds, would be more useful to a beginner than knowing what a softbox is.
When it comes to post-processing, it would be impossible for anyone to learn anything about Photoshop in less than 40 small pages with plenty of white space. It's almost unfair to suggest to beginners that Photoshop is easy to learn. Better to refer to some basic image processing software that only has a few functions and tell readers that far more powerful and complex software exists for those who are prepared to make the commitment of resources.
Finally, many of the illustrations were just too small to be of much use to a reader.
This book might prove useful to an inexperienced individual who wants to get some inkling of what is involved in digital photography, but few will be able to rely on this book as their sole reference.
