Derrick Story is not new to Digital photography or Photoshop. He has extensive experience with squeezing the most out of very little and having it look good. If you're new to photography in general, you may have to read a few of these twice. Those that came to digital from SLRs or moderate film cameras have probably tried and failed at many of these "hacks." Some of us have succeeded at these or similar hacks. But there are a few in the book that I've never tried, and many that are improvements on methods I've developed in the last thirty years of doing photography.

There were at least a half dozen tricks that I just had to try right away, and all had merit. This book includes many color photos pictorially reinforcing the text and showing screen shots and hardware that might otherwise be difficult to understand, or at least, unclear.

Also there are many useful URLs that are actually current. All the links I checked worked. Even some of the text was blue, which made this book a joy to navigate when used as a reference source. The index is clear and states what is covered in each of the "Hacks" so one can quickly locate a particular technique (Such as shooting Fireworks), and the associated equipment you might want to take with you to shoot for such an occasion. There are even a few QuickTime Pro directions in here to edit DigiCam movies and make scrolling titles.

Who will benefit from this book? Anyone that has an interest in Digital Photography beyond the snapshot level. There are a lot of interesting experiments and techniques that are only practical since the innovation of digital photography (free film and immediate processing for all testing comes to mind). Night Photography, Motion, Infra Red, Bounce Flash, Multi Exposure, Time Lapse and Remote Photography are all introduced in a usable form. It might also be noted that Derrick shares my inability to remember things as accurately as we'd like, so the digital camera comes to the rescue in ways that just weren't practical with film.

All told, the book comes out to about ten cents a page (297.2 content pages) or thirty cents per "Hack". If you only used 30% of the stuff, at a buck each, it's still not a bad investment for the quality of info inside. Like any Photoshop manual, the information will never get old. It gets added to, but rarely deleted. A good photo tip lasts forever, unlike a good Operating System.

Reviewer: Dale Fletcher I have spent 30 years in the Audio Visual business, traveling the world and photographing people with both video and still cameras. A few people were foolish enough to give me money to put on these big 100 projector computer programmed shows with lasers, singers, dancers, pyrotechnics, fog, fancy lighting stuff and even paid for me to bring my friends along to help out. We had lots of fun and I stayed in places with hot and cold running water and stuffed mattresses, some even had 'lectric lights. Man, I was livin' large. Bought me one of those Apple 1 circuit boards and hooked it up to a Teletype keyboard, patched it to a Moog synthesizer kit and a B&W TV. Cool thing it was.

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© 2004 by Dale Fletcher & MLMUG
Posted 08/24/04
Updated xx/xx/04