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Digital Photography Expert: Close-Up Photography: The Definitive Guide for Serious Digital Photographers (A Lark Photography Book) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Freeman
Publisher: Lark Books
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $4.95
You Save: $15.00 (75%)
New (5) Used (3) from $4.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 641057
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 8.3 x 0.5
ISBN: 1579905447
Dewey Decimal Number: 778.324
UPC: 661741005442
EAN: 9781579905446
ASIN: 1579905447
Publication Date: April 28, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New - may have a small remainder mark on the edge.
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Product Description
An acclaimed professional photographer, with a display of more than 400 beautiful color images, shows how to get close-up and personal with a digital camera. Michael Freeman teaches amateurs how to meet the challenges of this very special type of photography, with plenty of information on the ins and outs of magnification, parallax control, and depth of field. See how to apply selective focus to enhance the subject and make it stand out from the background. Such issues as using found and commonplace objects and capturing the beauty of shadows, all receive detailed attention. With technical tips and software retouching projects too, this guide is simply an indispensable resource for the avid digital photographer who wants to take great close-up shots.
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| Customer Reviews:
Techniques for All Types of Situations January 25, 2008
I've been taking close-up photos for 6 months and thought I should expand on what I've picked up on my own. This book describes itself as "The definitive guide for serious digital photographers." Maybe I should have read some sort of beginner's guide first, as there was a lot that was over-my-head in this one. Maybe my camera isn't complex enough to do all the things the book talked about.
I did learn some useful techniques from the book such as using specialized backgrounds, textures and black for photographing objects. There's usually about 2 pages for each topic. Here's what's covered in the book:
Degrees of magnification 10
The optics of close-up 12
SLR techniques 14
True macro 16
Depth of field strategies 18
Making shallow focus work 20
Where to focus 22
Composite focus 24
Case study: closing in 26
Case study: closer still 28
Found objects 30
Reflections and shadows 32
Case study: strange encounters 34
Case study: pearl harvest 36
Flash 38
Photographing with a scanner 40
Micro 42
The microscope 44
Photomicrography lighting 46
Special techniques 48
Fiber optics 50
Chapter 2 The Art of Still Life 52
Composing a still life 54
Minimalism 56
Props, styling, and sets 58
Continuous lighting 60
Studio flash 62
A basic setup 64
Lighting style 66
Case study: jade horse 68
Shadowless white 70
Case study: clipping paths 72
Drop-out black 74
Settings and textures 76
Backgrounds with purpose 78
Digital backgrounds 80
Tools of the trade 82
The minutiae of still life 84
Improvised lighting 86
Digital composites 88
Shiny objects 90
Light tents 92
Glass, etcetera 94
Jewelery 96
Food 98
Lighting food 100
Case study: fish market 102
Liquids 104
Scale models and toys 106
Built to order 108
Coins and stamps 110
Case study: out of the studio 112
Copyshots 114
Lighting flat artwork 116
Chapter 3 Nature in Detail 118
Color and pattern 120
Flowers and fungi 122
Plants in situ 124
Flowers in the studio 126
Trees 128
Life in miniature 130
Tropical macro 132
Special flash setups 134
Zoos 136
Indoor sets 138
Lighting and welfare 140
Wet sets 142
Lighting aquaria 144
Fossils and bones 146
Shells 148
Rocks and stone 150
Minerals 152
Gemstones 154
 Good overview. Too general as intro. instuctional resource. July 30, 2007
As another reviewer who gave it 2 stars, I agree that this is more of an "overview of the field" than a practical "how-to" book. For example, I picked up this book to find info about choosing the best macro lens(es) for flower close-ups, and to learn about the differences among most popular options (50 mm vs. 100 mm. macro properties); instead, the author goes into detail about using elaborate setups with lens extension rings (p. 14-15) and even provides a table with extension types and magnification each provides, but does not discuss the basic macro lenses available on the market to advanced amateurs and professionals alike...
The diagrams that explain different lighting setups are helpful, but much of the book deals with setups and types of photography that will only interest specialized professional studio photographers (e.g. sections on museum reproduction and cataloging photos of coins, shells, gemstones and pearls, and reproduction of manuscripts / prints and paintings). Even in those cases, it seems that this is way too complex for an amateur, and yet not specific / detailed enough to be of use to an experienced (or aspiring) specialist. I was hoping this would be the same level of detail and quality as the same authors excellent book on black and white photos (in the same series), but it's not even close. It is certainly worth a look, if you can find it at the local library, but not something I would recommend buying.
Far Off February 9, 2005
21 out of 25 found this review helpful
This is a book that attempts to cover the entire range of close-up photography from close-ups of gems to close-ups of insects. As I read this book I kept wondering what audience the author was trying to reach and what he was trying to teach that audience.
The book is laid out in individual sections of two facing pages. Each page contains text and photographs or diagrams. The layout resulted in beautiful typography but almost seemed to interfere with a coherent development of any subject because of the desire to shoehorn the material into the two-page format, when clearly some subjects required extensive development that couldn't be so limited.
Moreover the level of detail was not enough to help a beginning close-up photographer in the basic tasks or an experienced photographer in complex tasks. Instead the book was most useful as an idea book about what is possible in close-up photography.
Often the author offered opinions without any substantiation. For example, he regularly indicated that single lens reflex cameras were best for close up work, but never explained that that was due to the difficulty of framing a close subject due to parallax errors with a camera whose viewfinder is not on the lens axis.
There is also a lot of bad information here. For example at one point he suggests manually calculating exposure for a flash picture. I found this incredible given that fact that most digital cameras provide for some sort of automatic, through-the-lens, metering of electronic flash.
But then I should not have been surprised. Undoubtedly every publisher now wants photography manuals pitched at digital photographers. Indeed the title of this book is "Digital Photography Expert Close-up Photography", and the cover states that it is the "definitive guide for serious digital photographers". And yet there is not a single mention of what I consider to be the most useful tool offered by digital cameras, a histogram of light values to aid you in calculating exposure.
Finally, much of this book is devoted to something other than close-up photography. For example, the discussion of rocks and stone features pictures of a slot canyons and petroglyphs all of which appear to be at least 10 feet distant from the camera.
I don't want to suggest that this book is totally without merit. Scattered throughout the book are tips that a close-up photographer might find useful. For example the author suggests it may be possible to achieve depth of field by compositing several pictures of a small object in editing software, each with a different focus point, to create the appearance of sharpness where a single image would not succeed. But for someone looking for a well-conceived, total approach to the art of close-up photography, using a digital camera, this book is not a help.
 Close Up Work is a Different World January 16, 2005
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
Cameras and lenses are normally designed for and indeed used for standard photography at standard distances. When taking pictures at normal distances standard equipment, standard techniques work well. When you move into pictures where the image is the same size or larger than the object being photographed the whole picture changes. The equipment, the lighting, and the techniques are different.
Michael Freeman is a consummate master of close work. In this book he goes into the equipment and more important the concepts that become important in photographing things may be too small to be seen through the naked eye. He is a professional photographer and has had numerous difficult assignments to photograph. In this book he discusses several of his projects and the extraordinary efforts he had to go through to get the final result.
The book is less a tutorial than a series of examples of pictures and the detailed setup required to produce them.
 A Great Reference & Learning Tool September 18, 2004
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
This book has examples of any type of close-up photography you can imagine, plus tips on how to take pictures of each type of object. It also reviews some of the basics of the techniques behind it. It is very light however on talking about the tools, especially the lighting tools.
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