Digital Exposure Handbook at Dominant Systems Book Store

“Exposure is the heartbeat of photography… If you try to overlook this key fundamental, your photography will never realize its full creative potential.” That’s the compelling message of this extraordinary tutorial. It explains why automatic settings limit the digital camera’s artistic possibilities, and shows with a gallery of spectacular examples how technically “incorrect” exposures achieve dramatic effects—creating bold silhouettes or blazing highlights, manipulating depth of field, blurring to give the sense of motion, or freezing fast action. This exhaustive state-of-the-art manual covers all aspects of its subject, from the basics of metering and the use of flash and filters, to the four-thirds system and exposure in the digital darkroom.

Customer Reviews & Comments
Exposure is both a very important and a very challenging part of learning photography, a topic that can be approached from many perspectives. This probably explains why so many books about exposure are available. Having read quite a few of them, Ross Hoddinott's "Digital Exposure Handbook" was a very pleasant surprise. I recommend it to anyone looking for a solid introduction to the fundamentals of exposure plus a little bit more. It also makes a good "refresher book," which is why I picked it up. Hoddinott is a straightforward, engaging, and effective writer. No compulsive attempts to be funny or with it, no wandering around the landscape trying to cover everything. He just gets down to business and in a little under 200 pages delivers all the content you need, in fact more than you get from many much longer books. There are six chapters: The basics of exposure, Exposure in practice, Ambient light, Flash light, Filters, and Exposure in the digital darkroom. A glossary and list of websites are provided. Chapters are divided into self-contained discussions of specific topics, usually about two to three pages long. You can read these in sequence or search out something of particular interest. Hoddinott provides page references to related discussions elsewhere in the book, so if you encounter something unfamiliar, it's easy to find the background information you need. Though organizing the book this way leads to some repetition, I didn't find it at all bothersome and credit Hoddinott for his thoroughness and clarity. The book is extraordinarily well illustrated, mostly with Hoddinott's own work, which not only enriches the discussion but shows that he knows very well what he's talking about. The intent of each photo is identified and equipment/exposure information provided -- very helpful. The book also includes discussions of technical points, set inside "boxes" so the flow of the text is not disrupted. I found the supporting illustrations and "boxed" discussions some of the most useful material in the book -- there was no stinting here. The book's small format is deceiving, by the way. The pages are double-columned and the type fairly small, something I did find annoying. There is a lot more content between the stiff covers than you'd first expect. All in all, this is one of the few exposure books that will stay on my bookshelf, alongside Michael Freeman's "Perfect Exposure." Two very different approaches to a fascinating subject. For the record, I'm a semi-professional photographer (which means I make a little money at it but not enough to quit my day job) and shoot mostly landscapes with some street/urban work.

Back To Top