The Complete Idiot's Guide to Photography Essentials
Presented in concise, intuitive style, this guide has much of what amateur photographers need to know to produce great images, whether shooting in digital or film (does anyone still do that?). Best of all, each chapter includes FAQs and full-color visual examples to turn good shots into great shots. Professional photographer Mark Jenkinson shares tips and tricks for:

• Understanding how the features and controls affect Photographs
• Making the best use of manual, aperture priority, and shutter priority settings
• Shooting moving objects
• Shooting in bright light or nighttime settings
• Adjusting depth of field
• Improving composition and lighting
• Choosing the best format for storing digital images

Connected Photographer's evaluation
We like shorter photography books and this book makes everything very clear to understand, without spending too much time on any individual technique. If you can take pictures, but want to create better-looking images, this book might be for you. You're not going to turn snapshots into masterpieces, as the book promises, but you might turn snapshots into something worthy for your wall.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Photography Essentials by Mark Jenkinson, published by Alpha, is 304 pages and has a retail price of $24.95. We give The Complete Idiot's Guide to Photography Essentials a rating of 4 out of 5.

OUR RATING: 4 of 5

James Booth is Editor-at-Large at ZATZ Publishing. In addition to writing for Computing Unplugged and Connected Photographer, he's the author of Do-It-Yourself Wedding Photography. A self-taught photographer, James also dabbles in digital graphics and has learned to be a PC and handheld specialist through personal trial and error. James can be reached at jbooth@zatz.com.