Today we’re going to review The Basic Book of Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Enhance, and Share Your Digital Pictures (Oct. 2009) by Tom Grimm and Michele Grimm authors of best selling classic The Basic Book of Photography.

About the Authors:

For more than 30 years, Tom Grimm has partnered with his wife, Michele, as a photojournalism team, specializing in worldwide travel photography. The couple has visited every continent and more than 130 countries in search of outstanding images. They now have been published worldwide on the Internet and in books, magazines, and newspapers. Tom has been a photography instructor at the University of California at Irvine, and as a couple they have led numerous photographic workshops and tours. The Grimms are authors of a dozen books available from Plume/Penguin.

About the Book:

The Basic Book of Digital Photography attempts to answer the question: What are the best ways to shoot, enhance, and share your digital pictures?

The first half of the book covers the basics of digital photography with a quick start guide and chapters on choosing a digital camera, lenses, accessories, and various settings. There’s nothing new here and that’s okay. This book on photography is supposed to be a comprehensive guide so these chapters, while uninspiring, are a necessity. If you’re completely new to photography, or making the switch from film to digital photography, then these chapters will certainly help in getting you started. Tom and Michele write in a easy to read and understand style that lends itself well to their audience.

The second half of this book on photography is where Tom and Michele really start to shine in their teachings. They cover creativity with photography and composition, getting your pictures from camera to computer, organizing, archiving, editing, printing, and sharing. This is where most photographers will gain insight into actually doing something with their cameras.

There’s a final chapter on video and camera phones and a very extensive glossary on photographic vocabulary.

Make no mistake, this book is huge. 528 pages of detailed and well explained vernacular on digital photography means that this book on photography is going to be a reference book not a field guide.

Photographers new to the digital realm will find that The Basic Book of Digital Photography is comprehensive and very readable. Tom and Michele Grimm use lively text and their personalities shine. Basically…they tell it like it is while not ever really speaking down to their audience.

My singular complaint is that most of the photographs in the book are in black and white and not very well reproduced. While there is a small section of beautiful color photographs in the middle I often find instructional books on photography flow better when there are large well reproduced examples spread throughout the book.  Due to the size of the book I’m going to assume that this was a cost and final book size issue.

As always, I try to keep the authors’ target audience in mind when rating a book. This comprehensive reference book on photography is for the beginning digital photographer and photographers still making the switch from film to digital.

We’re giving it a

4 out of 5

Get your copy of The Basic Book of Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Enhance, and Share Your Digital Pictures at Amazon today.