Complete Digital Photography: 9th Edition

Essential for those into photography

I teach photography and mentor on occasion. This is PPA recommended and it is hands down the best for any new photography student.

I just recently received the updated book and returned the previous version of this book. Many people have known the old version had print issues where the pages bleed and looked like a grainy mess. Well wait no longer the upgrade is here with better photos and print. I like the fact that Ben cares about his fans and so, he mentioned about taking the old version out and replacing it with the updated version. Hip Hip hurrah. The new updated version is smaller and compact with the same information of the other book. They also fixed the binding issue of the previous version. More additional improvements was the ink no longer bleeds and that is a great news for those of us who had photo issues. Either than that my best wish is that the paper gets a little more improvements by thickening it up like the previous version. let us hope the book quality continues to improve.

basic camera section and composition clear and understandable Used in digital photo class phoenix college

As a working photographer and photo educator, I'm blown away by this new edition. The text is straightforward, comprehensive, up to date, and entertaining. That's a tough balance to find in today's photo industry. Chapter 10 on lighting in particular caught my attention. It details so much information including new LED technology, continuous light vs strobes, sync modes, modifiers and real world example images to make this complex subject accessible. The flow is very linear from the basics to the more complex. This book truly strikes the balance between working as a reference source for the seasoned photographer and serving as an enjoyable, easy-to-follow teaching guide for new photographers just starting out. Bravo Ben Long. Nice work!

Came in fast and it was in great condition

I returned the paperback. The font for the body of work is unacceptably small and makes it difficult to read. The margins are too wide. It’s a shame the formatting ruined what might be a decent book. Buyer beware.

This is a very comprehensive and informative photography book, written in a very readable style. I really appreciate the tremendous amount of effort the author put into preparing this publication. It is clear he has a passion for the subject and wants to share that passion and knowledge with others. I highly recommend it.

Great book. It is used at Conestoga College as a learning tool and a "must" read and have. I am a total novice but now everything makes more sense in the highly complicated digital photography world.

The book has all the information from Ben’s video courses that I’ve seen and more. All the things that I’d write down for myself about technical, compositional and photography process tips were already written down in this book. Love it!

El contenido es adecuado en general, aunque le falta algo tan importante como una sección de objetivos para cámara; el papel es muy delgado. Esperaba más por ese precio.

I owe most of the things I've learnt about photography to Ben Long's videos on Linkedin Learning, and decided to buy his book. As expected from Ben Long, the book is very to-the-point, yet light to read and very informative.

The 9th edition of this introduction to digital photography is becoming a little old and doesn't cover new camera features or new software, but it remains very relevant. The book covers most of the important topics and isn't too in-depth nor too shallow. However, I've been concerned several times while reading the more technical parts because the information is sometimes outright wrong. For example, the description of the human vision is completely erroneous on several points, which made me wonder if it was made up. More annoyingly, the author doesn't seem to have a good grasp of some more fundamental notions of digital photography. For example, he claims that the ISO setting is one of the three exposure variables, along with shutter speed and aperture. The confusion comes from his belief that the gain amplifiers on the sensor work during the exposure and not after the image has been captured, which was true for films but isn't true for digital sensors. In reality, the 3rd variable is simply ambient light, not ISO; those amplifiers act on the charges left after the exposure, an important difference. Sadly, I couldn't find any errata, and the book's website has been abandoned. So, while the factual errors won't stop you from learning the basics and making good photos, it's worth being aware of them and checking some of the facts in other books or online, since some of them may be the key to improving the skills further or choosing the right camera for the job. The website associated to the book contains a few additional PDF documents or web pages, some of which are worth reading. For example, one debunks the usual belief about depth of field and shows the parameters that really matter. It's not entirely accurate, again, but has the merit of pointing to a video by someone very knowledgeable. The software put forward in the post-processing chapters is unfortunately Adobe Lightroom, which wouldn't have been my first choice (neither as a professional or a beginner), but it's not impossible to transpose the process to other, better suited tools. To be fair, the book was released in 2018 and a lot has changed since. In conclusion, it is worth reading if you're new to photography or if some aspects aren't understood yet, but you'll definitely need to complement this book by a more accurate source of information for several of its topics.