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A Creative COW Book Review
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Mike Gondek
Orland Park, IL USA
©2004 Mike Gondek and CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved. |
Article Focus:
CreativeCOW leader, Mike Gondek examines Digital Photography Hacks: 101 industrial Strength Tips & Tools by Derrick Story and published by O’Reilly, (2004, 332 pages). Read on to find out why Mike says, ''If you have a digital camera and want to improve your images learning from a book written in an easy to read format, then you will enjoy this book.''
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 Who is this book for?
Most people own a digital camera nowadays, and this book helps you get the most out of your camera. Most of the hacks are for point and shoot cameras, but SLR owners will find new tricks inside this book. If you are on a budget and are looking for solutions to your photography problems, Derrick Story has done all the research for you on all the best buys. If you have a digital camera and want to improve your images learning from a book written in an easy to read format, then you will enjoy Digital Photography Hacks.
Content
The hacks range from tricks such as rubber banding the back of a white business card to a flash head for reflecting soft light onto your subject, or getting a properly exposed moon on a dark night. You don’t get a lot of technical mumbo jumbo but just a lot of good ways to hack your photography to make it better.
The first half of the book was the most interesting to me, giving me better ideas for exposing my subjects. Want to find out how to get softer light to reduce wrinkles, or how to shoot a reflective surface and eliminate glare, it is the first half of the book. Do you want to get a shallower or deeper depth of field, or create motion trails on a moving object, get the hack.
The final chapters on working with images for PDAs, cellphones and organizing your images were not as interesting to me as I was more interested in high end digital photography tricks. There also are some hacks for using quicktime to do rolling movie titles, which I already was more familiar with having bought the Quicktime Pro CD form Lynda.com. It was easy though to skip over content which was not of interest to myself thanks to this book being organized as 100 different hacks.
Final Thoughts
Professional photography is within the reach of the average consumer now, and here is a timely book which should appeal to a wide market of people. Though I would have enjoyed seeing some studio techniques for lighting a set, I found many tips to add to my arsenal of photography hacks from this great book. I give it 4 cows. If you are not a professional photographer, but would like to learn how to get better results using mostly items you already have, then Digital Photography Hacks: 101 industrial Strength Tips & Tools by Derrick Story will an interesting read for you.
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