The Newbie’s Pictures Information: The Final Step-by-Step Handbook for Getting the Most From Your Digital Digicam

Truly for Beginners
This book is invaluable for a person just starting out. It explains things i.e. camera jargon, camera settings etc., in an easy to understand way. Highly recommend.

Book was great
Perfect starter book. Allowed me to get started quickly taking great photos.

Great Book for Understanding Digital Cameras Better!
I’ve done film photography since the 1970s and know a lot about the photographic principles and processes. In the digital era, I got lazy and had never really learned how to translate my pre-digital photo knowledge into setting up and using digital cameras effectively. I mostly stuck to Auto, I’m sad to say. Camera manuals are pathetic, so what I really wanted was to learn exactly how digital cameras do what they do, and learn to use my digital cameras’ settings more creatively than you can do on automatic. As one example, Gatcum explains beautifully the differences between all the possible settings such as Auto vs. Program, and what the benefits and limitations are for each one. This is one example of a topic the limited and badly translated camera manuals are silent on. This book assumes limited photographic knowledge so it would be fine for photo newbies, but it’s actually extremely well laid out with brief but useful explanations and really great illustrative photos that anyone could learn and benefit from. I got a lot of good ideas from the various subjects the book. Another good point is that the topics and descriptions are clear, precise, but not too wordy. Just enough to illustrate the subject well both in description and with visuals. I have recently bought several similar books and this one is my favorite and I learned what I wanted to learn. Very useful for those in my situation as well as for total beginners, and highly recommended.

Excellent Book
Preface: I rarely write reviews as I believe a dozen people can look at something or read something and obviously have a dozen different opinions or thereabouts. So why this time? To state this book is one of the best educational books I have seen (and I have a background in adult learning techniques). It is laid out in a logical sequential manner with simple (yet, not making someone feel simple) instructions. I am completely new to photography and this book has quickly educated me and lessened the feeling of being overcome by the possible complexities of using my Nikon D3500 which by the way is an awesome beginner camera (for me at least). I highly recommend this book for the absolute newby to digital photography. Peace be with you.

Great and well designed. I loved the book, but if you were also taught how to take pictures using a smartphone, the book would be better.

I’ve been a semi-pro photographer for many decades, going through film, medium and large format cameras, to the first digital cameras, through to today’s best Sony and Nikon DSLRs. So, I don’t consider myself a novice to the art and science of photography. But I do continue to look for good books on photography to recommend to friends (and, mostly, their kids) who want to do better than smartphone photographs.This book, and it’s follow-on volume, are two of the best books I’ve seen on the subject of digital photography. Focusing (sorry!) on the Beginner volume, there’s one of the best explanations of the differences between Auto, Program, Aperture, Shutter, and Manual modes in the first few chapters that I’ve seen in a book, and taking not too many words to convey the concepts accompanied by photos that show when and how. In fact, that’s a theme throughout the book: lots of photos illustrating the settings and controls, and the effect they have. For example, talking about exposure, there’s photos to show different exposure corrections, and a (no so beginner) discussion of stacking for effect. Throughout the tone is light and useful. I like the way each spread of two pages is on a subject, providing just enough information for a beginner to “get” the concept and implement it. The book moves to more interesting and technical subjects in the latter part, but it’s done well and should not scare anyone away (a problem with some other Beginner books I’ve reviewed).I’ve already recommended this book to several people and they have all said they learned a lot from reading through (and trying) what’s discussed. Instead of going with plain old Auto mode every time, they experiment with growing confidence, and become better photographers along the way. That’s what a Beginner book should do, and this one accomplishes it well. I’m impressed and wholeheartedly recommend this book both for beginner and Intermediate photographers.

Still learning after 30 years of photography