BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS

In this article I will suggest some of the best photography books to learn digital photography. These are some of the best selling photography books out there in the market. I have tried to search out the direct links from the online merchants so that if you are interested you can go and buy it online. 

These books are the one which I personally feel are good enough to bring you up to speed in understanding the basics of photography. Some of them are good in theory while others in providing the practical experiences  or in other words tips to improve in the field. What to do what not to do. What to carry to the field for any special type of photography. These also include some of the best photography coffee table books  which you can consider to use as a show piece in your guest room in the house. 

Some of the best DSLR photography books are also included. These books go beyond the regular camera manuals to explain the fine tuning ability of your camera for quick turn around and to extract every ounce from your dslr. Beginner photography books will cover only the basics of photography which will help understand what is photography, what is a camera, what is a lens , what are the different types of lens in the market etc,I have limited to 2 books per category so that interested people can make the choice easily. These are the books which I have used personally and have been benefited in some way or the other in my photographic journey. I request you to keep watching this post as I will adding more and more books on the go when I feel its good one and definitely going to help you. 

The famous trilogy from Ansel Adams : The legendary American photographer.

The autobiography of Ansel Adams.

Very good books to learn composition in photography. 

Best book to learn Panoramic photography- This book explains A-Z of panoramic photography  Using this book was very helpful to me in deciding the right kind of equipment to use and other tips and trick to be followed. I have made many award winning 360 degree panoramas. I highly recommend this book.

18 percent gray card

Most of us are aware of the importance of a Gray card in reflected light metering.

Here is a little story behind it. I use a gray card from Kodak which I bought from BnH here is the link http://bhpho.to/12kAXIg.
However there is a caveat before using it. Please read through.

What is a 18% Gray card?

 Many reference “gray cards” are referred to as 18% gray. In the printing industry, 18% reflectivity is considered halfway between the white of paper and the black of printing inks. However, actual scene luminance is a bit different from the brightness of printing ink on paper. Light meters are calibrated to an ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard of 12.3% reflectivity, which is a closer match to 50% luminosity or L=50 (in Lab colorspace). For some unknown reason, reference cards in use for  photography, if they are calibrated at all, choose 18% to represent medium gray! This may come from Kodak who continues to manufacture and market an 18% gray card. 18% gray actually refers to a printing specification (Kodak’s cards are produced using printing ink on an offset litho press) and presumably this makes it easier to manufacture. The bottom line is that the 18% Kodak gray card is a bit “lighter” than the 12.3% reflectivity that light meters are calibrated to and so, if you expose at the reading you get off the Kodak card, you will be underexposing by about 1/2 f-stop. Ansel Adams was aware of this and made reference to a mysterious “K” factor in his Camera and Lens book that had you opening up by 1/2 stop from the reading off the card.

I prefer the incident light meter reading or in reflected light meter an exposure precision afforded by adjusting exposure in 1/3 stop increments; therefore, to avoid overexposing, I only open 1/3 stop from readings taken off 18% gray cards.
Try it. You will be amazed to see the results.

I bought from BnH here is the link http://bhpho.to/12kAXIg. 

High Speed Sync: auto fp and cls

Most of the modern DSLRs can work in high speed sync mode. That is the flash works at shutter speed higher than that indicated as the sync speed.

As we all know how the front and rear curtain of the shutter work to achieve those high shutter speed. First curtain travels and before the first curtain covers the entire sensor frame the second frame starts to close leaving just a small slit being exposed at that time. if the flash fires at this time only that part of the frame which was exposed at that point gets the flash light leaving other parts dark.

This is the reason why there is a sync speed for focal plane shutters which is much slower than the the leaf shutters which is built on to the lens unit making every lens even costlier. 

But in modern day cameras there is an option to bypass this sync speed and use flash at much higher speeds. The AUTO-FP option in the Flash menu in Nikon is the one you have to use for this. Canon users can use the High Speed SYNC option on Canon cameras. This is built in to most of the cameras but we need dedicated flashes which can work in this mode. Nikon SB600, Nikon SB700, Nikon SB800, SB900, SB910 support his mode. Built in popup flash do not work in this mode. Its called AUTO-FP in Nikon because it works in high speed sync mode as long as the shutter speed is higher than the sync speed. But when the shutter speed is equal or less than the the sync speed of the camera it automatically switches the flash to normal sync mode giving a single pulse of light

How the flash works is instead of putting out light in one single pulse, the flash actually flickers for longer amount of time throwing out light for longer duration as long as the 2 shutters roll over the sensor completely  This can be used only as a fill in light as the flash looses around 2 stops of light in this mode. This is highly useful for nature photographers or out door photographers when we need high shutters and open aperture to blur background fill in flash in this mode can help to put some fill light and give catch light to bird's eye or the subject's eye. To improve the throw of lights from flash there are custom made Fresnel lens called the Better Beamers from www.lenscoat.com which allows the light to be magnified there by improving the throw and hence covering more distance when using longer telephoto 

lens.