Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers
By Harold Davis
First Edition April 2008
Pages: 176
ISBN 10: 0-596-52988-0 | ISBN 13: 9780596529888
I started my serious exploration of photography as a teenager in the 1960s, using a WW II-era Leica borrowed from an Uncle. I shot B&W film, since the old Leitz Wetzlar lenses weren't designed for color. If I needed a light measurement more accurate than my eyeballs, I'd pull out a separate light meter, since the old Leica didn't have one.
While a graduate student in the 1970s, I invested in an Olympus OM-1 SLR, a breakthrough at the time for size and weight in a 35mm SLR, but definitely a manual camera: its only electronic doodads are a match needle light meter and a synchronized hot shoe for an external flash. I still shoot with that camera, but not often: I finally succumbed to the digital photography bug when my artist sister upgraded to a digital SLR and gave me her old Nikon Coolpix 5700. While most of my photographic skills apply to the new medium, a few things required adjustments to my thinking, such as the concept of a digital ISO setting and the multitude of shooting options in a digital camera. As you might expect from a die-hard manual photographer, I'm less than satisfied with the Coolpix' fully automatic default mode.
I'm finding Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers very helpful for making that shift. It's a beautiful collection of images as well as an education. I find Davis's explanations of the fundamentals clear and easy to understand, but I'm learning even more from his notes about the thinking and process that went into each image.
Davis also blogs, at http://www.digitalfieldguide.com/blog/. His blog entries are similar to the images in the book: he combines each image with some notes about what he was interested in emphasizing, and how he got there.
Posted by Martin Heller on June 15, 2008 08:42 AM
