General Advice please

This may sound daft to all of you who know what they are doing (I dont) My husband was (many years ago) a photographer in the RAF. When he came out there were no photography jobs around and he became a paramedic keeping photography as a hobby. He has a couple Yashica cameras and two Pentax SLR cameras. He is retiring in May and will be receiving as a retirement gift a Pentax digital body which will take all of his pentax lenses.

Now, for that birthday I would like to get him a digital photography book and, knowing very little about the subject, I just wondered if anyone could advise me or just give an idea as to books please. I know that the camera will come with its own manual but thats not what I mean.

Any help would be appreciated.

Donna Prosser

Taking pictures with a digital camera is really pretty much the same as taking slides using a film camera. He obviously doesn't need to be told too much about that, so in my view he is likely to benefit more from a book on how to edit his pictures on computer.

Real World Camera Raw by Bruce Fraser is the bible of digital editors.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-World-Camera-Adobe-Photoshop/dp/0321334094

It is based on an expensive computer program called Photoshop CS2, but most of it applies to cheaper versions (eg Photoshop Elements), and, indeed, to other programs.

If your husband is a bit of a novice when it comes to computers and digital editing, this might be a better bet (it's more serious than the title suggests):

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Digital Photography Like A Pro

http://tinyurl.com/34bvg7

Best wishes

G

That happens too often to be accidental. I know some people who "join pentax club" also having yashica cameras.

I don't know good books in English about photography (at least because English is not my native language) but I can give you an advice. If your husband was a professional photographer he knows about photography almost everything. In case he took shots using only film cameras and now wanna take them using a digital one that could be a book about image processing by a computer program like PhotoShop.

Isn't that exactly what I wrote? Or is there some subtle difference that I have failed to observe?

G

Sorry, don't be so upset. I didn't read your post before.

I'm not upset. Just bemused.

G

I am a huge mac computer fan.
preloaded on every mac is enough software to get anybody started.
I know there are tons of books out there, but I prefer magazines.
I feel between magazines, forums like this and a computer that was designed from the ground up to be easy to use...will have ANY photoenthusiast up and running digitally..in no time, with the added benifit that less time behind the books, and computer screen equals more time behind the camera...

Good choice in camera by the way.
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A book from one of my favourite authors : The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby. 8.39 pounds at Amazon.

All of the replies here are useful thanks. I'm glad I joined. When I dont need to keep the whole thing secret any more then I will pass it all over to my husband Haydn