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Product Description
A full-color, illustrated adventure into the high-tech wonders inside your digital camera by the author/illustrator team that created the bestselling How Computers Work.
With clear and simple explanations that say, “You, too, can understand this,” and brilliant, full-color illustrations, How Digital Photography Works, Second Edition, gives you detailed information on the hidden workings of digital cameras, professional picture-taking techniques, and even photo-editing software. Some of the topics covered in this groundbreaking book include:
· How Digital Viewfinders Frame Your Pictures
· How Twin Lens Cameras and Tilt-and-Shift Lenses Change the Rules
· How Cameras Focus on Moving Targets
· How Exposure Systems Balance Aperture and Shutter
· How Electronic Flashes Create a Burst of Light
· How Studio Lighting Creates a Perfect Lighting Environment
· How Color Calibration Makes What You See on the Screen Match What You See on Paper
· How Your Camera’s Microprocessor Manipulates Images
· How Photoshop Expands a Photographer’s Artistry
Introduction
Part 1: Getting to Know Digital Cameras
Chapter 1 The Workings of a Digital Camera
Chapter 2 Inside Digital Video Cameras
Part 2: How Digital Cameras Capture Images
Chapter 3 How Lenses Work
Chapter 4 How Light Plays Tricks on Perception
Chapter 5 How Digital Exposure Sifts, Measures, and Slices Light
Chapter 6 How Technology Lets There Be Light
Chapter 7 How Light Becomes Data
Chapter 8 How New Tech Changes Photography
Part 3: How the Digital Darkroom Works
Chapter 9 How Software Changes Pixels by the Numbers
Chapter 10 How Digital Retouching Rescues Family Heirlooms
Chapter 11 How the Digital Darkroom Makes Good Photos into Great Fantasies
Part 4: How Digital Print-Making Works
Chapter 12 How Computers and Printers Create Photographs
Chapter 13 How Photo-Quality Printers Work
Glossary
Index
Product Details
* Amazon Sales Rank: #73788 in Books
* Published on: 2007-03-05
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 240 pages
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Author Ron White is the author of the award-winning, decade-long best-seller How Computers Work and a dozen other books on digital photography, computers, and underground music. He has been a photojournalist for three decades, both shooting photos and writing for some of the best-known publications in the United States. He gained attention early in his career by leaving the water running in the darkroom at the San Antonio Light, flooding the publisher’s office. He has since acquired drier recognition as a newspaper and magazine executive and as an award-winning writer and publication designer. He has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Robert F. Kennedy Awards for his criticism and investigative reporting and by the National Magazine Awards for his self-effacing humor as a feature writer and columnist at PC Computing. He has been a host on NPR’s Beyond Computing and a frequent guest on television and radio to explain new technology. Currently, he is working on The Daily Digital Digest, a newsletter and Internet blog to expand on the information found in his books. Tim Downs and Ron White have worked together on editorial and advertising technical guides for more than 10 years. Ron lives with his wife, Sue, in San Antonio. He can be reached at ron@ronwhite.com.
Illustrator Timothy Edward Downs is an award-winning magazine designer, a photographer, and the illustrator of the best-seller How Computers Work. He has directed and designed several national consumer business, technology, and lifestyle magazines, always infusing a sense of “How it Works” into every project. By tapping his vast computer system and process knowledge, Tim has developed the richly illustrative style that is unique to the How It Works series. In How Digital Photography Works, Tim has further blurred the lines between informational illustration and photography.
Customer Reviews
One for your library5
So you may know how to make a great shot, but actually understand how your camera works makes you get more out of what you are trying to achieve. Sure it is important to understand about F-Stop and all those cary over terms from the analogue world of 35 mm photography, but the internal workings of the digital camera are different from the old 35's and are worth a look.
The book is broken out into four section. While the fourth section covering ink-jet printers, monitors etc under the heading of "How Digital Print-Making Works" , is under explored and frankly, seems a peripheral subject and not really paid much more than lip service in terms of content. The other three sections are on track and full of great visuals. The sections are 1. Getting to Know Digital Camera, 2. How Digital Cameras
Capture Images, and 3. How the Digital Darkroom Works. Each section has chapters which are backed up by Downs' great artwork. The graphic from encyclopedic approach works to merge the text and graphics to get each point across. While the aforementioned sections give you a good idea of the topics covered, the value out of the books topics comes in the form of greater knowledge of your tool to get a better result. A good example of this is the section detailing how your eye can control auto-focus. Sounds futuristic, but most mid level camera SLR's have this function that follows the retina to bring in view the subject.
Some of the book has items more suitable for the technique side of photography, but the book would make a good library item or one for the tween or teenage age group who is embarking on a photographic hobby.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing1
This is one of those books which promises much on the surface but if you scratch the surface a little bit, you will soon realise that it's really incomplete, and worse, misleading.
Errors and irrelevant or outdated info litter the pages of this book.
Examples:
1. Autofocus technology section: active autofocus is pretty much not in use with compact digital cameras these days. Passive contrast detect autofocus is pretty much the norm with such cameras. So this section is pretty much outdated at best, and at worse, utterly worthless in describing how your everyday point and shoot digital of today works (and mind you, this is the 2007 Second Edition I am talking about). Hell, the majority of compact digital cameras have been using contrast detect AF for at least the last 5 years!!!!! Worse yet: the author then erroneously describes DSLRs as using contrast detect AF when he should be describing the workings of the ubiquitous 'phase detect' AF common to all DSLRs on the market. Good grief man: Phase detect AF has been the norm in SLRs for well over a decade!
2. Light metering section: whilst not wrong, it's utterly useless in helping the neophyte understand how modern multi-segmented pattern metering operate. This is the default metering type across most consumer cameras and frequently used in DSLR cameras today (and for goodness knows how long already). Points no. 1 and 2 on Page 70 on "How Light Meters See the World" is a hodgepodge of pseudo-correct information that is largely irrelevant and meaningless.
3. The author obviously doesn't understand basic photography: page 65 "a setting of f/8 lets in as much light as f/4". Yeah right.
4. Olympus sensor self-cleaning system (page 136/137) - the vibration is 35,000 times per sec and not 350,000 times. The strips are also NOT replaced through regular cleanings of the camera! The whole idea of the Olympus dust cleaning system is so that the user does NOT have to do any regular dust cleaning ;-) Having the words "Oscillation circuit" pointing to the vibrating glass is meaningless.
5. Four thirds system (page 122): the author tries to explain to the reader in point 3 that the 4/3 system lenses use special glass to get the light parallel to "hit the pixels more directly". Uh huh? Look it's not the glass per se - it's about telecentricity of the optical design of the 4/3 Olympus lenses that's does this.
I should have seen the warning light go off not to buy this book when the author quotes Ken Rockwell!
It's clearly not hard to get a book published these days it seems.
An opposing opinion1
After reading the enthusiastic reviews of this book, and always interested in technology, I decided to purchase it. I was extremely disappointed. Some of the plus factors that are mentioned in the other reviews are correct, great big color pictures, easy to read articles, etc. Although even that is not an unmixed blessing, White gives the same amount of space (two pages) to every subject, regardless of its complexity. But that's not my main objection, rather, it's the astonishing amount of errors in this book! It's difficult to read a page without seeing an error. These range the gamet, from pointers to the pictures pointing to the wrong object, up to completely incorrect concepts. While some are minor, others show a complete lack of knowledge by the author. Pages 32 and 33, for instance, are, as Wolfgang Pauli said about another subject, "not even wrong!" And there are errors on pages 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 also. Many will conpletely confuse the beginner. It's difficult to pick out just one example, but, for instance, on page 65, referring to f stops and the amount of light left in, he states ""Each smaller f-stop lets in twice as much light as the next larger f-stop and, of course, a setting of f/8 lets in half as much light as f/4." Any photographer can tell you that f5.6 lets in half as much light as f/4 and f/8 half of that. The entire book is saturated with this sort of thing. I see that it is the Second Edition, I shutter (pun intended) to think what the first edition contained. If this book sounds of interest, I suggest you wait for about the eighth edition, maybe by then they will have gotten it right. Too bad, it has potential.
Dave C
