My Books Are In!!

This is a short post, but I was excited and wanted to share. I had been looking around online for any photography book that was, most importantly, cheap and had some good reviews. Someone on The Nest crafts board recommended Scott Kelby's "The Digital Photography Book" as a good guide for any beginning photographer. I researched it online and it seemed to have a lot of good reviews, so I figured why not. I was able to find a boxed set with free shipping on Buy.com for $26. Here they are!

Now after doing a brief review of the two volumes, I will admit these books require you to have some basic knowledge about photography. It's not like a school book where you'll get some definitions of what things like aperture are. What is good about these books though is that you are given the tricks of the trade. It provides excellent tips for anything from shooting flower close-ups to large landscapes to wedding portraits. I may try to research more photography books and use these two as a supplement. Just in the last week of shooting, I have noticed what affects some of the manual features have on a shot; but I think I still loosely grasp things. Once I get through reading these two books, I will post a little review.

If anyone has any suggestions for some books I can check out, let me know! I'm trying to learn photography the cheapest way I can, which means avoiding a formal class for now.

Read the Manual

My husband would give me that "I told you so" laugh if he reads this. With just about every piece of electronic equipment I have bought in the time I have known him, he always tells me the same thing, "Read the manual." He won't even let me use things sometimes until I have done so. Of course, like a stubborn child, I try to just wing it and figure things out as I go along.

Like I mentioned in my last post, I'd been using the "auto" function in my camera, and honestly who needs a manual for that. Last night I sucked it up and read the manual for my camera. I had to research it online because I had no idea what the real manual that came with the camera even looks like, let alone where it is in my house. Yes honey, I hate to admit it but you were right; I should have read this sucker a long time ago. There are so many functions I didn't even realize existed on this camera. I can finally have a good understanding of what all the buttons on the camera do. My next "study" project is to figure out what affects playing with the shutter speed, aperature, and ISO speed have.