Rating: 
Summary: Just what I needed. It's all in there!
Review: As an advanced film photographer, I've had my eye on the recent advances in digital photography for quite some time, and this book will help anyone, experienced or beginner grasp a good thorough understanding of what digital photography encompasses. This writing does not go into the specifics of all the digital cameras in today's market, there are plenty of equipment review sites online to handle that task. Instead, the book provides excellent material regarding how digital cameras work; what components are common and present in the various models; how to match a camera to your particular shooting requirements; the "similarities" and the "differences" between digital photography and traditional film-based photography. It further gives a good basic understanding of photography fundamentals which apply to picture taking in any medium. There are some excellent Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements image editing lessons included.This is BEST digital photography book I have read and I have purchased over 10 different books on the subject. It is comprehensive and covers not only digital photography but also the principles of photography in general. It is complete! I am totally impressed by this book. I could ramble on, but let me just summarize and say that if you are serious about digital photography and/or are interested in making the transition from film to digital photography or just want to get the very best results from your digital equipment, this book should greatly help you achieve your goals.
Rating:
Summary: Takes Digital Photography to the Next Level!
Review: Dummies books always make good introductions to a topic, but this thick book really dives deeply into digital photography. Most digital photography books ignore the photography aspect in favor of techie discussions of hardware, sensors, and gadgets. Either that, or they expend most of their pages discussing image editing rather than photography. This one covers all the bases. I loved the extensive chapter on shooting sports and action photos, the detailed coverage of portraiture, a very nice discussion of useful tricks for getting the best travel pictures, and an in-depth discussion of close-up photography. All of it relates to the special capabilities and needs of digital photography, too. There's plenty of information on image-editing, too, for those who want to know how to fine-tune their digital images. I even liked the chapter on scanning. Everything is well-organized into separate "books" which each have meaty chapters dealing with a specific topic. It's easy to zip through the table of contents and find the exact information you need. This is one of my favorite Dummies books!
Rating:
Summary: Seven great books in one, for sure.
Review: Finally, here is a book clear enough for the beginner yet serious and thorough enough for an advanced user for honing digital photographic skills. This book gives you everything you're looking for in a digital photography guide and a lot more besides. I was looking for a book that would get me going in the field of digital photography and this one did just that. I'm new to digital photography so this book really helped me get a VERY good foundation on which to expand. It is a great book to read no matter which digital camera you might own because it covers the basics of most, if not all, of the features in cameras available these days. The chapters are well written and easily put into practice. So if you are a novice, like myself, I strongly recommend this book. You'll get a lot out of it. It's complete and technically accurate but does not try to intimidate you with complicated photographic jargon. You can find everything you need to achieve technical excellence and also gain an understanding of the creative process. The author's clear, friendly writing style fits in well with the Dummies style, and makes the information easy to grasp and enjoyable to read. For years I've been looking for a book to recommend to newcomers and this surely is it!
Rating: 
Summary: Less useful than I hoped - a follow up
Review: I am writing this as a follow up to my Much Less Useful Than I Had Hoped review below, as I maxed-out the 1000 word limit and cannot edit it to address any of the points that subsequent reviewers have made. First, though, I think some comments about assessing the usefulness and credibility of reviews may be in order. I've noticed some characteristics in common with many/most of the reviews I've found helpful and I've also noticed characteristics in common with many/most of the non-helpful reviews. See if you agree with the following: HELPFUL REVIEWS: - Use proper grammar and spelling.
- Are respectful of other reviewers except those who are blatantly juvenile.
- Provide detailed explanations for both why the reviewer liked aspects of the reviewed subject and why the reviewer disliked the reviewed subject - the reviewer uses facts, logic and reason to justify his or her opinion. Reviews are much more candid and credible when they discuss both the pros and the cons.
- Provide examples or quotes to illustrate the praise or criticism.
- discuss most or all aspects of the subject of the review, not just a minimal sampling
- compare this subject with other similar subjects to give the reader some reference point
- provide some background in order to understand the reviewer's point of view NON-HELPFUL REVIEWS: - Use juvenile and deficient spelling and grammar and/or are disrespectful of other reviewers
- Make very conclusory statements without supporting the opinions with facts, logic or reason. e.g "It sucks!" It's kewl and rad, dude!" "It's just so wonderful and I loved it!" etc....
- Provides only a cursory description of the overall subject and does not give the reader a clear idea of the full product
- Fail to give the reader any understanding of the reviewer's point of reference. OK, so now that I've hopefully got you all thinking about how to evaluate a review, I want to address some of the gung-ho! five-star reviewers' points on this book. Please note that I don't own any other digital photography books and have no agenda to promote any particular competitors of this book - I'm just commenting on a book that I own (and even bought off Amazon). First, compare the level of detail and in particular the examples each reviewer has in his/her review. Some of the five-star reviewers do get fairly detailed, but most do not - they make statements of great praise, but fail to justify that praise. In my review, in contrast, I tried to provide details and examples from the book to illustrate my points and my view point. Next, I'd like to address the opinions that this book is "jam-packed" with tips on photography. If the reader is new to photography, this book may give that appearance. However, I still maintain that except for doing studio portraits of people and doing macro-photography, this book has very basic information on actual picture taking and those several chapters comprise only a small fraction of the book. Please, look at the book itself - the actual table of contents illustrates this point. Compare this book's picture taking chapters with those of the average regular photography book and you should see my point - actual using-the-camera-in-your-hands text in this 7-in-1 book is not particularly detailed. Let's look at what the book really contains. Count the sections on intro to digital photography, selecting equipment, using Photoshop, restoring old photos and how to publish and market your photos. They take up at least two thirds of the book, maybe more than that. I did not find those hundreds of pages to have any use to me - will those subjects be useful to you? I think the old adage "jack of all trades master of none" applies very fittingly to this book. I'm guessing that many if not all of the "not helpful" ratings my review received are from people who already own this book and whose opinions (and most likely points of reference) differ significantly from mine. If any of those people read this review, I'd like them to follow up and support their own opinions. I'm not trying to preach to the choir - I'm sharing my views with the hope of helping other people make informed decisions when they are shopping for a digital photography book. Again, I'll conclude with the best advice on digital photography books that anyone can give: plan on spending some reasonable amount of time in an actual bookstore reviewing not just this 7-in-1 Dummies book, but several others too. I wish I had. Look to see if you agree with several of the points I've made or that other reviewers of this book have made. Look to see if there is substantial text in the book that addresses the areas where you have questions or need more information. Read some of it carefully to make sure that it makes sense to you and the author's writing is clear. Then, make up your own mind. Finally, don't hesitate to make some use of the internet, though, because some of the best websites of any sort that I've seen online are the digital photography websites -they really are exceptionally useful reference sources. Last but not least, enjoy your digital camera.
Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: I bought this book after reading all the positive reviews from other buyers. I'm afraid I disagree with all of them: the thickness of this book looks really impressive, but the contents was quite dissapointing. I started out with the sections on image editing, which stretch out over 4 'books' (this book is supposedly 7 in 1 books). They are virtually identical in contents, so you keep reading the same instructions over and over again. Usually with (too) small variations and even conflicting here and there. It gave me the impression of someone adding a few hundred pages without checking what had already been written.
The most important part, the 3 first books, focus on 1. which camera to buy 2. which accessories to buy and 3. how to take good photos in general and some specific kinds (macro, portret, sports etc). Book 1 once again contains sections on basic image editing, beats me why. Because books 1 and 2 didn't interest me (I already have a camera), I skimmed them and moved on to book 3, which promised to finally teach me how to make good photos. Although I did pick up a few useful tricks, they are all fairly basic and not really detailed. If you are serious about learning to take great photos, this book is not for you. It is just too basic. If you want to learn about image editing, the book might help you to experiment on your own, but it remains a bit basic for my test. You'd do much better to pick up a book specific for the graphics program you are using.
If you are a real newbie, this book might be what you need to get started, but you'll soon 'outgrow' it if you have some common sense and experiment a little.
Rating:
Summary: Very nice digital photography book.
Review: I enjoyed this book very much because it had the right combination of digital photography facts, photography practices and techniques, and a helpful introduction to image editing. If you'er looking for one book that covers just about everything you need to know about digital photography, this is the one for you.
Rating:
Summary: Less useful than I hoped - a follow up
Review: I had a lot to learn about basic photography, and I found everything I needed right in this book. Unlike most of the digital photography books I've sampled, this one doesn't concentrate on the technical side of things, with endless discussions of sensors and hard disk drives and other computer paraphernalia. Instead, the author focuses on photography, with lucid explanations of stuff like depth of field, selective focus, action stopping and even composition. This book is almost a textbook in photography. There are many other good things here, also. You'll learn how to choose a digital camera and optimize your computer. There are good sections on image editing and some advice on choosing the best image editing program. There was even a chapter on printing. This book was very comprehensive. I would have liked to see more color pictures, but the color inserted pages were very good, and to be honest the black and white illustrations really conveyed everything you needed to know. This is a thick book at a reasonable price and should be every digital photographer's first buy.
Rating:
Summary: Basic photography course in a book!
Review: I had a lot to learn about basic photography, and I found everything I needed right in this book. Unlike most of the digital photography books I've sampled, this one doesn't concentrate on the technical side of things, with endless discussions of sensors and hard disk drives and other computer paraphernalia. Instead, the author focuses on photography, with lucid explanations of stuff like depth of field, selective focus, action stopping and even composition. This book is almost a textbook in photography. There are many other good things here, also. You'll learn how to choose a digital camera and optimize your computer. There are good sections on image editing and some advice on choosing the best image editing program. There was even a chapter on printing. This book was very comprehensive. I would have liked to see more color pictures, but the color inserted pages were very good, and to be honest the black and white illustrations really conveyed everything you needed to know. This is a thick book at a reasonable price and should be every digital photographer's first buy.
Rating:
Summary: Great author, great book! Best for Digital Photography!
Review: I had the opportunity to meet the author after a presentation he made in Dayton recently, and was surprised and pleased by the depth of his knowledge of photography. His talk was sprinkled liberally with anecdotes from his photography experiences, with concise explanations of how this applied to our own digitial/photography work. He kindly took the time to offer some advice for me after he autographed my copy of this book. I was delighted to see that the book itself was as full of good ideas and solid techniques as I'd expected. I'd purchased other books on "digital photography" only to find that they were too advanced or covered digital gadgetry more than photography. Mr. Busch's book is solidly in the middle. It's easy to read, funny in places, and quite accessible for the beginner. Yet, he provides lots of "professional" tricks that anyone can use. This is truly one Digital Photography "desk reference" that's worthy of the name. (I have to admit that I don't leave it on my desk all the time; I'm fond of toting it along when I shoot photographs of vintage airplanes and other subjects.) Thanks for a great book!
Rating:
Summary: Everything I needed to know about digital photography!
Review: I just finished reading this book and had to write a review immediately. My search for the perfect digital photography book is over! I previously purchased one book to learn about how digital cameras work so I could decide which model to buy. That book didn't help, because it listed too many obsolete models. This book, on the other hand, tells you exactly what features to look for when choosing a digital camera, and how the features affect your pictures, from a photographic standpoint. It's great for anyone looking to buy their first (or fifth!) digital camera. I bought a second book to learn how to take digital pictures, but it seemed to concentrate on simple stuff that I already knew. This book does include information for beginning photographers, but the author also reveals many more advanced techniques that should help the beginner and please the more advanced picture taker. This is truly a photography book. Before I found this book, I'd also purchased a book on image editing with Photoshop Elements. This book also covered Photoshop Elements, and it covered the newer Version 2.0 edition. It also did a better job of telling me how to correct my photographic mistakes in an image editor. There are chapters on specific kinds of photography, more chapters on selecting from the tempting accessories and add-on gear available for digital cameras, and the color photos are outstanding. This book made me feel like I could read it and become as good a digital photographer as the author. (At least I hope!)
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