Recommended Reading Material

[mtracerz]

Hey guys,
decided after a few years of putting it off, to try my hand at photography.
Been looking at getting either a Canon d40 or d450.

Its all really new to me though, and seem to be finding it hard to understand a lot of the terms, such as lens names and sizes, and what these mm's mean in terms of what the lens do, and obviously things like exposure, f.stops - really what i'm getting at is everything. :bonk:

I put a post up in the welcome section about which books would be good for a beginner to read, but didn't get many results, some one put up Understanding exposure - Bryan Peterson. What others would be worthwhile?

Cheers

 

[swag72]

Here's a little link for some top reading. Not necessarily aimed at the beginner, a quick look on amazon will probably throw up quite a bit of info on the reviews to give you an idea.

Hope that helps.

 

[Suvv]

If you need the real basics then have a look at books in the library. A quick read before you borrow them will show if they start with the basics - most will.

Don't worry if they are old and have sections about film and developing, the basics are still the same, you do not have to read the whole book, just concentrate on what you need to know.

Get as many as you can as they will explain things in different ways, also check out the children's section. Any books there will be clearly written and contain a lot of basic info.

 

[Arkady]

Libraries...there's a blast from the past...

Great idea that - go there...sit...make notes in the warm...leave...

Cathedrals of learning, my Grandad called them...

 

[henryf4]

The dummy guide is quite useful in explaining all these terms or you can just google them.

Quick answers.

Canon Lens name, EF can be used by all cameras, EFS cant be used by 5D, 1D (I think).

MM means the focal length of the lens, the lower the number, the wider the view, the higher the number, the more zoomed in.

Exposure means getting a perfect picture in terms of light using ISO, aperture and shutter speed.

F stops measure how much light you let in. The lower the number, the more light there is.

I would recommend the 450D instead of the 40D to start off with.