The Basic Book of Photography: The Classic Guide

by Tom Grimm, Michele Grimm

This bestelling guide is one of the best resources available to photographers, regardless of skill level. From the types of cameras, lenses, and other equipment to the finer points of lighting, exposure, and composition, The Basic Book of Photography is an essential addition to your bookshelf. Information on new digital technology is included. With clear illustrations and and easy-to-use format, this book is a must for anyone interested in photography.

Genres: Photography, Reference, Nonfiction, How To, Art

672 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

MICHELE and TOM GRIMM, who are a wife/​husband writing and photography team, welcome you to their website that is facilitated by The Authors Guild, the oldest and largest association of published authors in the United States.

Reviews

[Darryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

While we have progressed to digital photography since this book was written, the principles it instructs the reader remain unchanged. Some time has passed since I first read this volume. Still, I like to have it on hand as a reference. Well-written. Good illustrations.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great reference book. Keeping this to refer back to often.

[mo9 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I’d seen it recommended as a go-to volume for people interested in learning photography. I didn’t read it cover-to-cover and never intended to; it’s nonfiction, not a novel, and there’s no reason for me to read the portions that don’t apply to me. (I do not, for instance, need to know how to change rolls of film mid-roll, as my camera is digital. Change mid-roll? As easy as popping one memory card out and the other in.) I concentrated on the sections that detailed things like how camera settings (shutter speed, f/stop and ISO) interact and composing an effective image.

I’m glad I did pick it up. I won’t say I “learned a lot”, because a lot of it was more giving conscious form to things I had already been doing instinctively (which allows me, then, to work on improving my use of these techniques), but I did learn some things. Understanding how f/stop controls depth of field, for example, is going to help me take more effective close-up pictures, as now I know that a wide f/stop can help with that fuzzy-background effect I’d been having so much difficulty figuring out how to achieve. And that I then have to set the shutter speed up lest the increased light overexpose the image.

Something I hadn’t expected to come away from this book with, and did anyway, was a new appreciation for the wonders of digital photography. The edition I was able to find at my local library was not the most recent; it was an older edition published in 1997. A little digital-photography history: Digital cameras became commercially available in 1990; a megapixel professional model was available in 1991; and it wasn’t until 1997 that a consumer megapixel model was released. After that, it still took a couple of years before Nikon released the first digital SLR developed entirely by a major camera manufacturer. (That professional model in 1991 I mentioned was a DSLR, but Kodak based theirs on a Nikon body.) Wikipedia lists the cost (I presume for the body, not including lens) at “under $6000″. So I’m guessing that when this book was written, digital photography was only just beginning to really catch on, and probably not many people had digital cameras yet.

This resulted in the book focusing (no pun intended!) almost exclusively on film photography, with only brief mentions of digital included. I wasn’t surprised about that, but hadn’t thought much of it. SLR, DSLR, same mechanism to different storage media, right? Well, yes, but I’d completely lost sight of exactly how convenient digital photography really is. The book takes a lot of time to explain how to set up a shot, advises taking multiple exposures at different settings, advocates aggressive use of light meters to determine what those settings should be, and generally wants to make sure you waste as little film as possible. With a digital? Set it up, take the shot, preview immediately to make sure the exposure is correct, repeat as necessary until you’ve got what you want. Nor are there any worries about things like film not loading right (leaving you with a blank roll), accidentally using the wrong speed film (you can simply adjust the ISO setting on the camera to control the “speed”), inadvertently exposing the film to light during the loading process, etc.

It left me with, aside from some new ideas and fresh inspiration, a sense of gratitude for having started getting serious about this late enough that I could skip some of those issues. There’s still plenty to consider when using a digital camera, of course, and they have their own pitfalls to watch out for. But there are a lot more advantages to digital photography than just saving money not having to buy film.

[Bernie4444 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some digital but mostly old school.

Mostly geared to “Film” techniques and processing this book is great for what you missed and will never see. If you were a mechanic this would be a book on carburetors.

Over 200 black and white photos. Nothing you cannot show your children.
Appendix A is an extensive glossary of photographic terms. Again, “you” may have explicative deleted terms while trying to take a picture. However, there is nothing in the book you can not show your children. Many of the terms are ancient and may need further looking up to find their context.

[Krish · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that every budding photographer must have. Explains the fundamentals very well.