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 enlarge | Author: Bill Hurter
Publisher: Amherst Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
Buy New: $16.90
You Save: $18.05 (52%)
New (29) Used (14) from $16.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 40524
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3rd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 158428207X
Dewey Decimal Number: 778
EAN: 9781584282075
ASIN: 158428207X
Publication Date: August 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: NEW, LOOKS GREAT!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Get Monte Zucker's Handbook or the 2nd Edition - the 3rd Is a Mess March 5, 2008
35 out of 35 found this review helpful
I waited a few months for the 3rd edition to come out, and now wish I hadn't, due to how it tries to put three books - an introduction to digital photography, a portrait handbook, and a book on Photoshop techniques - into 120 pages. Each of those subjects is far too in-depth to cover well in one book and, even as it is, it's poorly done.
Chap. 1 - Equipment and Basic Techniques
A good intro to lenses, depth of field, meters, umbrellas, etc.
Chap 2 - Good Digital Working Techniques
Here's where it starts to go off track, basically giving you a beginner's manual on digital photography, including info on formatting your cards and backing up your images.
On top of that, the Shadows/Highlight tip on page 25 is flat-out wrong. First it has you create two copies of the layer, apply Shadows/Highlight, and then apply a layer mask, when in fact the Shadow/Highlight tool is designed so you don't have to use a copy or layer mask. And when it says to paint white on the faces "to conceal the underlying data," painting with white actually reveals it.
The Camera Raw examples are also useless, as when it shows the resolution bumped from 2000x3000 to 4000x6000. Any beginner reading this is going to think that's the way to go and end up with a huge file that will only bog down their computer with useless resolution. It even says, "by converting the file from Adobe RGB 1998 to a wider-gamut color space (ProPhoto RGB), the file can be easily enlarged to 4000x6000 pixels." Color space and resolution have nothing to do with each other, and 99% of the people reading this book wouldn't want to do either of these adjustments.
Chap 3 - Posing
At last we get to portraits, and here there's good general guidelines covering the shoulder, eyes, mouth, and hands. But the stock photos illustrating the chapter don't help at all. For instance, it says to have a man fold his arms across his chest with the edge of his hand turned to the camera, but you're not given a clue how it looks. Instead, we get a half page photo of a pregnant woman lying upside down, wrapped in gauze. We're even told the title of the portrait: "Anticipating." But we don't learn a single thing from it.
Chap 4 - Composition
Briefly covers the rule of thirds and the golden mean, and tells you how "the S-shape composition is perhaps the most pleasing of all compositions," and the inverted L-shape is "ideal for seated subjects." Sounds great, but heck if I know what they look like `cause there's not a single example of either of them.
Chapter 5 - Basic Portrait Lighting
The text is fine, covering all the basics, including metering. Hurter also tells us how split lighting can be used to narrow a wide face, but there's not a single example in the whole book. In the same way, another section says "a round face may appear more flattering from a different angle." But again, it offers nothing in terms of what the angle might be or what it looks like.
To top it off, only three photos in the whole book show the lighting equipment and set-up for how a photo was made, so you have to guess what is where and what it might look like. Monte Zucker's own "Portrait Handbook" has dozens of such examples.
Chaps 6 - Lighting Variations, and Chap 7 - Outdoors Lighting
These chapters are about window light and portable flash and are quite good on both subjects, covering scrims, fill-flash, etc. In fact, these two chapters are actually better than Douglas Allen Box's entire book on the subject, "Professional Secrets of Natural Light Portrait Photography."
Chap 8 - Spontaneous Portraits
This section is short, but good on interacting with your subjects.
Chap 9 - Corrective Techniques
This section covers how to correct twenty-one problems, from overweight subjects to large ears, but it crams it all in on just four pages, with no examples.
Chap 10 - Retouching Techniques
This waste of eight pages starts off with a full page of text about retouching in the old days. As for the rest of it, it's nuts to talk about linking layers and layer sets, which most people will never use and there isn't room here to cover well.
Chap 11 - Fine Prints
When buying a book on portraiture, you don't want to be reading what the unsharp mask tool does for the twentieth time. And you sure don't want to be reading about monitor calibration, color management, printer profiles, and color correction. Katrin Eismann's "Restoration and Retouching" and her new "Creative Digital Darkroom" cover all these much more clearly and comprehensively, so just get one of those and skip everything Photoshop in this book, just like the author should've.
Review Summary
If you're new to portrait photography, you'd be better off with Erin Manning's "Portrait and Candid Photography" in that it's much better illustrated in making each point, shows the actual equipment you'll be using, and covers the usual situations you'll encounter. If you're a bit further on and want to learn great technique, Monte Zucker's own "Portrait Handbook" is excellent in focusing on each area, with photos to match the text, and has dozens of photos showing the positioning of the lights, scrims, reflectors, and windows. And when he brings up digital issues, it's all useful in portrait work, as in how to actually read the histogram to ensure an accurate exposure.
In the end, this book tries to cover too much and so ends up giving too little. If it'd focused on what it's supposed to be - an introduction to portraiture - instead of using up a full quarter of the book on digital issues, you'd actually have something.
 Not too little, not too much. February 29, 2008
Superb studio images. Goes into good detail without being too technical and covers a wide range of info for the portrait photographer from lighting to film and camera types to posing and more. Well done resource.
Nice for some hints on portrait photography February 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book has some lovely pictures and gives good hints on posing techniques and some studio work. The book is of good overall quality for a paperback.
I am not entirely impressed by the authors' writing though. He gives too little information about how results were obtained. Considering the reader, you probably need to be a real pro to understand what he is talking about (when it comes to some of the comments next to pictures), and if you are a pro, you will not need this book. He should be thinking about the more novice photographer who need to get hints on f-stop, shutterspeed, ISO settings, white balance and all those basic things that he probably take for granted. Most images in the book were taken with real pro cameras by pro's (i.e. they are good examples) but we would like to know how on earth they managed to take those great shots.
So in conclusion - if you are a pro/semi-pro or really know what you are doing when it comes to digital photography, this could be nice if you need hints on portrait techniques. If you are a novice, you can enjoy the pictures and the storyline...
 Concise conceptul background. February 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is quite good to understand the philosophy of taking great portraiture. Written in very simple language without any sophisticated jargons, reading and understanding what the author explains was a joyful experience. The negative side to me is that I need a more technical how-to. From selecting brands, understanding specification, to parameters used in achieving the brilliant sample pictures. This way it will be easier for me as a newcomer to try the myself and start to explore further.
Excellent! Lots of information February 3, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Very good book. It includes lots of information you want to know. Very well written. You will certainly learn a lot. It will take some time to read and digest..and apply all the tips. Very good. I am very pleased.
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