Complete Photography Course Hardcover – 1 Sept. 2008

This book really is a stunning book, inside and out. The outside of the book is well designed and looks great. The colours are vibrant and it looks great on the bookshelf. The inside of the book is well laid out with fantastic photographs, and clear and concise text that is easy to read. It's printed on thick glossy paper and the colour reproduction is excellent.The information contained in this book is very in depth and it starts from the basics, and advances to the more intermediate level as you get further into the book. The book covers the basics of ISO, aperture (f-stop), shutter speed, exposure, accessories, flash, lighting, composition, RAW, JPEG, editing, photoshop, printing and much more. It really is a complete guide to photography. A beginner could pick this up, read it, and come away with a complete understanding of the basics of photography.This book helps you take your photos from basic snapshots to professional looking print quality photos. The authors are very humble and there is no bragging about their achievements throughout the book, only a small part at the end. They are clearly very skilled as the photographs, and the in depth training they give you are both fantastic.The book is very easy to read, it's not too heavy and it's accompanied by lots of really inspirational pictures. The authors don't assume your skill level at all, you could know nothing about photography and come away happy here. This book is perfect, both for beginners or the more advanced as it's a great reference book.I couldn't recommend this beautiful, well written book enough.

I bought this book as I had taken a short photography course in college as part of one of my art degree electives. Back then we used to use the 35mm film camera's and so I had the basic concepts down but needed a refresher. I recently inherited a Canon EOS 400D with a great zoom lens and I wanted to make sure that I use it to it's full capabilities. The way the chapters and sections are divided is great because you can refer to the section you are most interested in rather than read it from cover to cover (as I hardly read manuals like that I prefer books that treat each subject individually as a stand alone). The book serves to show you what constitutes a photograph and explains the basic concepts. It also shows you (where it is relevant!) a photo with a setting and a photo without, so you can actually see what each setting refers to. The section on composition and lighting is actually more to do with training you to get a photographer's eye and then shows you how to achieve it with the filters and settings that they recommend. Overall a good book for the beginner and seasoned veteran, if only to sit on your shelf for that one day when you just can't remember what something means on your camera.

This was the first of three photography books I decided to read as introduction into the theme, its techniques and creative possibilities. The one best thing I can say about this Photography Course is that reading it has really got me into trying my new Sony Cyber-shot DSC HX100V. If the title with the word "complete" might be an overstatement, in fact it does include most or all of the subjects one would expect to find in a technical photography book.It starts by a quick review of the history of photography and then moves to a chapter on equipment with enough information for a newcomer to understand what kind of camera one should buy and what else is needed to produce the wanted results, from torch to tripods and even a swiss army knife. After this, the book has sections on exposure, aperture, shutter and lenses, interesting for both SLR or compact camera and film or digital users. Next, the authors introduce the reader to the planning and production of a photo and creative possibilities in sections such as composition, light, colour, filters and black and white. All of these sections include small projects to encourage the reader to try as he learns and small explanations on how the image achieved can go wrong. Finally, the last two chapters are on image enhancement (mostly, but not only, based on Photoshop) and management, organizing and printing images. I was glad to find that the book offers further reading advice and other strong points to it are the good quality images as examples to almost every concept and technique described, the reference of artists considered experts on them and the inclusion of a glossary and an index, sometimes forgotten but always useful in this kind of book.All in all, this is a really good read for photography beginners such as myself and, though one might need more information on some topics or could be happy with less time spent reading about others, as what each reader knows and is interested in a priori is different, I believe most would be satisfied with the organization and clear explanations given in Collins Complete Photography Course.

Despite my age, I'm fairly new to photography and wanted to understand how I could make the most of my new DSLR rather than relying on the mode settings and "Intelligent Auto" type function that many cameras have. This book goes through the basics (photo composition, aperture and shutter priority etc) in terms that are relatively easy to understand. I sat and read through it when it arrived, and refer to particular sections when I'm planning what I want to do before going out to take pictures.The course consists of a series of projects which are illustrated to show how changing the manual settings on your camera will impact on the pictures you're taking, and whilst you may not want to follow them to the letter they certainly give you ideas on how to experiment with the functions on your camera.I'd recommend the book to people who are new to SLR photography or have a digital camera that will allow some degree of manual control because it not only covers basic areas for those (like me) who know little about photography in general but also gives you tips on how you can start to change simple snaps into more memorable pictures.