The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography

by Jim Miotke

Whether you have a simple point & shoot or a DSLR camera, learning the basics of digital photography can be confusing. With  The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography,  those mysterious icons, strange jargon, and dizzying array of imaging software and hardware quickly become tools to create great pictures.

Illustrated with full-color photos for guidance, this easy, practical, lesson-based workbook gives you a step-by-step tutorial in getting bright, crisp, beautiful pictures from your digital camera every time. "Assignments" at the end of each chapter give you the opportunity to go out and test your new skills in real life.

Learn about exposure, file formats and quality settings, low-light photography, digital filters and white balance, composition and lens choice, manipulating images, printing, and much more, all in a handy, bring-along format. Everyone who wants to create great photos needs The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography !

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction, Art

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2005

About the author

Jim Miotke is a bestselling author, founder of BetterPhoto.com, and a Christian Scientist.

JIm loves being a dad, practicing Kung Fu with his kids and his friend Shifu, learning the piano and guitar, and of course reading.

His is “treat-giver” to his three adorable dogs.

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Librarian note: There is more than one author in the database by this name. See other authors with similar names.

Reviews

[Lourdes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pictures were old and content sooo boring. It felt like an outdated book. Youtube gives better explanations and more entertaining of what i could get from here. Ill give it a shot to his other book about photography and see if its better

[Jessica Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for beginners like me. He gives examples of pictures in each chapter, simple assignments, and gets to the point. The perfect book for anybody who knows how to use their digital camera and just need a little boost to help them along.

[Schnaucl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I consider myself a novice photographer but I found this book far more helpful than BetterPhoto Basics: The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Taking Photos Like a Pro. It seemed more detailed with more specific assignments. Subjects were covered in more depth and all the fundamentals were covered. The pictures were gorgeous.

Recommended.

ETA: Some of the technical information about cameras is a little outdated now (for example, most point and shoots no longer have an optical viewfinder and you can get a memory card with a couple of G without spending much money) but it's still a highly useful book and most of the information about how a camera works and the way it saves images is still accurate.

[Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good primer on the basics of photography. I had just purchased a DSLR camera and did not have much of a clue as to how best manipulate to camera to get the photos I was after. This book was a great start for learning those skills. Easy to understand with clear photos to demonstrate the differences between camera settings. It also has a good explanation of how to read and use a histogram.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good beginner's guide to photography. I am still working my way through it and almost to the end. It is a very simplistic breakdown of the basics. I highly recommend it to someone who is a beginner or needs a refresher on the basics

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the book selected for my intro to photography class. I found the chapters easy to read and very helpful. I will continue to refer to the book as it is a good resource for the beginning photographer.

[Faye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the better books that I have seen for photography.

[Bryan Bowden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very informative and easy to read book that gives a nice run down of not only digital photography, but photography in general. Excellent informative book.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

helpful info. for a rookie photographer

[Shana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great author, great tips, user friendly, practical advice, expressed in layman's terms...can't say enough good things about this book...worth every penny

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars for a 'how-to' book. (Which is much different than a three-star rating for non-fiction or fiction.)

[Marlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a copy of this book signed by the author. More than a how-to guide, it has inspiring images and great ideas to get your photography to the next level.

[Jim Grasley · Rating 5 out of 5]

We choose this book to teach from when we started our Photography Club. Excellent book on understanding digital photography.

[Heather Condiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this! It was so easy to follow and it gave me some great ways to look at photography that I hadn't thought of before. Made me hungry for new ideas and subjects for me to shoot. ;-)

[Deirdre · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the book that got me out of auto. I think it's a great first photography book to help a new photographer to understand his or her first dslr. Everything was explained very clearly.

[Jesse Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great introductory guide to photography. I plan on using many of the techniques described in this book with my future photographing projects.

[Sue Klasing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Technical Book

[Kelina Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really easy to follow. Photos for dummies.