Books

One of the two books I have found and recommend to anyone interested in learning how to take pictures of outer space. This book covers a wide range of options for capturing the cosmos, including using point and shoot cameras, DSLRs, CCD cameras, and even web cams. Tips and guides for using your camera with or without a telescope.

This is a short read and most likely the entire book won’t apply to what in particular you’re trying to do. I think I picked it up for under $20, so it’s a great guide to getting started and finding out if you want to take that next step into more involved astrophotography.

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This title on astrophotography focuses specifically on DSLR cameras, and goes into a lot more detail than the previous book I listed above. It is a little bit of a more challanging read and assumes you have a decent knowledge of both astronomy and photography terms. I felt kind of iffy in both categories, so I had to spend some time at other sources online to help get caught up on a few pieces.

The author also wrote the authorative Astrophotography for the Amateur book, which was released in 1999. It didn’t focus on digital technology back in those days, but it was a big part of the movement in bringing backyard astronomers to the art of capturing their stargazing hobbies on film. With the increase and the proliferation of technology available to more people today, much of the equipment has changed, however, his new book still has quite a few references to the original version that still remain true to this topic.

A little more expensive than the first book above, so probably something for those who are really serious about pointing their cameras towards the sky and mounting their favorite photo equipment to pricey telescopes. If your not sure if this one is for you, reading the Digital Astrophotography book is probably a good starting point.

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I still keep this book in my camera bag even after having the camera for 2 years. These Magic Lantern guides are extremely helpful for getting over that learning curve of your new DSLR model, especially if it is your first DSLR like it was for me. These types of cameras can have way too many functions and too many buttons to do things, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed right away.

It also has helped me to find more model-specific how-to’s and details about my camera that some of the online support documentation or other more generic books or tutorials can’t cover in much details. If it was a perfect world, these books would come with the camera right out of the box.

View at Amazon for customer reviews, and be sure to find the copy that fits your model camera.

A great book on using Flickr, if you’re new to the photo sharing service or even if you’ve been using the basic features for awhile and want to do more. I have already lent my copy out to various co-workers and they said it was a big help.

The current edition listed at Amazon is from 2006, and Flickr has their share of upgrades and improvements in that amount of time (can you say, video?). Much of the hacks and screenshots covered in this book still hold true of Flickr today, so it’s still worth a look. One of the better "Hacks" books I’ve seen from O’Reilly.

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I actually have the CS2 version of this book, but I imagine the newest edition is just a useful. There are a lot of neat tricks and fun ideas in this book, and the examples are very easy to follow and apply to your own photos. There are quite a few books out there that cover these same types of tricks, but so far I’ve liked this one the best.

One of my favorite effects out of this book was how to isolate only certain colors in your photos and washout the others into a grayscale mode. Check out my Colors of Maui set on Flickr to see what I mean. It can be a very tedious and painstaking process, but the rewards can be very enjoyable.

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The newest book I’ve purchased on working with Photoshop as part of my digital darkroom. I pulled this one off the shelf at the bookstore and read the first two chapters without putting it down. I was actually sold by page 5, and now I’m just dying to find the time to lock myself in a room and apply it.

The author takes a much different approach to learning Photoshop than I have seen in other books. He has 7 steps that he uses in a particular order to turn not-so-great photos into keepers. His teaching process is to go through these 7 steps over and over again through a series of 21 lessons, each with one of his lesser photos (which you are asked to download and use to follow along) and applies his methods to make them better.

Next time you’re in the Photoshop section of your favorite bookstore, take a look at this one and flip through the before and after photos of each lesson. Then, just read the first 10 pages that explains the author’s goals with this teaching style and you might be hooked, too.

I’m kind of inspired to show off my own before and after photos as a testiment to how this book has helped me, but like I said, I need to find the time first.

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