black and white photography a basic manual by henry horenstein

More about how to take good b&w shots with a digital camera that don't look silly or Instagrammed would be greatly appreciated. Most digital cameras allow you to take black and white photos, and most photo-managment software programs allow you to make a color image black and white. The one thing that could make this book better is if there were a digital-camera edition. The chapter on developing film in the darkroom, however, didn't really teach me much that I still need to know. Chapters on lighting, exposure, shutter speeds, and how the lens works were extremely informative. I'm glad I read the chapter on black and white film, for example, because it had good information on ISO, which is actually still something you can set on a digital camera. Henry Horenstein is a widely published and exhibited professional photographer and the author of more than two dozen books, including the classic texts Black & White Photography and Beyond Basic Photography,and monographs such as Honky Tonk, Animalia, Show,and Close Relations.

There is more information that is useful to a digital photographer than you might expect, but still, there are large chunks of the book you can skip if you've moved past film. Digital cameras are mentioned in passing, but the author is assuming that you'll be shooting on film and developing and printing your photos yourself. One thing that was a small drawback for me is that this book is all about film photography. So don't be put off by the black-and-white focus if your interest in photography is general.

The book got me thinking about contrast, composition, lighting, and range of focus, which is important no matter what kind of photography you're into. This book is all about taking black and white photos, but has lots of info that is relevant to photographers who shoot in color, which is what I normally do. That still sort of bugs me and seems counter-intuitive, but I think I at least understand now. It even finally cleared up something I'd never understood, which is why larger f-stop numbers denote smaller openings.

This book was perfect for that, explaining well how f-stops and shutter speeds effect photographs. I got it because I just got my first SLR camera, and wanted a book that would help me make sense of all the things the new camera lets me control manually, like the aperture and shutter speed. This book was a fantastic manual for any photographer.

Black and white photography a basic manual by henry horenstein