Digital Photography: 99 Easy Tips To Make You Look Like A Pro!

The cheesy-looking cover is a turn-off though, and a foreshadowing of the lack of visual sophistication throughout. The print quality of the black and white example photos strewn through the book is somewhere between mediocre and atrocious; there seems to have been little effort on the part of the publisher to ensure print quality and a modicum of contrast (all the b/w pics look washed out).

But Milburn mostly has himself to blame for the unappealing-looking photography. The guy just isn't that good a lensman. So while he knows his stuff, his pictures are only moderately competent -- and wholly uninspiring. A 16-page color section in the heart of his book is meant to show off his work to its advantage, illustrating different techniques. These pictures are well-printed for change, but their mostly compositional flaws shows that Milburn just can't practice what he preaches. The best example is his picture of a roller coaster, a photo whose surprisingly dreary colors are accentuated by what looks to be a mudfield occupying the whole bottom third of the image. Ugh.

Nevertheless, this is a solid and suprisingly exhaustive primer on digital photography. It could have been a great book if Milburn had had the modesty to use high-quality third-party pictures (even stock images would have worked fine), instead of uninspiring samples from his own ho-hum portfolio.


One of best teachers for cameras; but imaging falls short.   December 11, 2003
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

This book would have rated 5 stars, if only a CD with digital images were provided for the part II "Digital Darkroom" techniques. An excellent text for easily learning a lot about digital cameras - and worth the $20 for that part alone. But talking about digital image processing, supported only by poorly reproduced black-and-white shots on greyish paper, doesn't hack it. Had the author provided a CD with practice images to support his well-done imaging tips, it would have been masterful. But words alone are incapble of giving you the "feel" for fine-tuning options and sliders in PhotoShop Elements or similar programs. The author does provide a website address that perhaps will have the missing pictures? But no, I receive a puzzling message of "account unavaiable; contact your support rep". Huh? Anyhow, even if the images could be downloaded, it would be an inexcusable waste of the reader's time, and once again no substitute for an included CD. Ken Milburn is an excellent teacher - let's hope a 2nd edition of this potential winner will address these issues.


I don't know about Pro but   April 8, 2003
 6 out of 8 found this review helpful

this is a great book to expand your horizons with your digital camera. I like the layout and a digital camera makes it so easy and inexpensive to experiment with all the ideas laid out in this great book.

If you have a good background in photography, some of the concepts will not be new to you, but its a great gift for someone starting out with a new digital camera.


The best book I've found!   January 23, 2003
 16 out of 18 found this review helpful

This is the book on digital photography for which I've been searching since first immersing myself in this hobby. Every question that I've been trying to get answered is here. It's like the author wrote this book just for me.