The DSLR Field Guide: The essential guide to getting the most from your camera

by Michael Freeman

With the advent of bigger and better cameras at increasingly reasonable prices, more and more amateurs are upgrading their equipment to fancy DSLRs. Without the proper knowledge of how to work those cameras, though, the resulting images won't be much better than what you'd get from the average point-and-shoot. Though Michael Freeman has decades of professional experience, he is also a true teacher and in this handy little guide for novice photographers, he breaks down his know-how of all things DSLR into language that even the most beginner photographer can understand. Topics covered include equipment and lenses to post-production, and everything in between.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

Michael Freeman is a professional photographer and author. He wrote more than 100 book titles. He was born in England in 1945, took a Masters in geography at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and then worked in advertising in London for six years. He made the break from there in 1971 to travel up the Amazon with two secondhand cameras, and when Time-Life used many of the pictures extensively in the Amazon volume of their World's Wild Places series, including the cover, they encouraged him to begin a full-time photographic career.

Since then, working for editorial clients that include all the world's major magazines, and notably the Smithsonian Magazine (with which he has had a 30-year association, shooting more than 40 stories), Freeman's reputation has resulted in more than 100 books published. Of these, he is author as well as photographer, and they include more than 40 books on the practice of photography - for this photographic educational work he was awarded the Prix Louis Philippe Clerc by the French Ministry of Culture. He is also responsible for the distance-learning courses on photography at the UK's Open College of the Arts.

Reviews

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this on goodreads - I believe it will go in my camera bag, since it is a "field guide". Really excited for a reference guide, though.

I got this in the mail today and read most of it - it's divided into two sections "The Digital Environment" and "Image Editing". Since I didn't have my camera out I scanned the editing portion, as that will be more useful the more I practice shooting.

I can't believe how much I learned just in 60 minutes, though. I've had a goal of starting to get more serious about photography - rather than just being a mom with a DSLR who took one class in college understands how to shoot in manual. I'd like to practice enough that I could actually be GOOD at it. That of course will take practice, and I think throwing this little book (literally 6x4 inches) in the camera bag would help. I'm actually interested in more landscape/macro photography than people - and this little book could help me get on my way.

I probably learned more about how a camera works in the first 20 pages than my last 5 years of workshops and online classes I've taken. The sensor, image processor, dynamic range, creating HDR images, etc. I like how explanations are given for PC and mac. Cool.

Useful little book. Thanks!