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National Geographic Photographing Birds | 
 enlarge | Authors: Rulon Simmons, Bates Littlehales
Publisher: National Geographic
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $2.75
You Save: $17.20 (86%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 386808
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0792254848
Dewey Decimal Number: 778.9328
EAN: 9780792254843
ASIN: 0792254848
Publication Date: March 21, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new, may have remainder mark or slight shelfware
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Product Description
There are an estimated 85 million American birders, and just about every one carries a camera. But there's an art to capturing birds on film—and who better to reveal the tricks of the trade than two of National Geographic's foremost birders/photographers?
This appealing and informative guide is packed with practical know-how, presenting a wealth of techniques, tips, and hard-won wisdom about everything from the best equipment to use to how to lure or stalk birds until you have the perfect shot. You'll learn how to get close—but not too close—to a nest, how to frame a bird in full flight, how to cope with challenging weather or difficult lighting, and much more. Interspersed throughout the book, wonderful visual essays offer vivid examples of birding photography at its dramatic best, along with commentary on how the shot was taken and how its elements combine to create an effective, arresting composition.
And, unique among books in its field, this one covers not just traditional film but also the latest developments in cutting-edge digital equipment and its particular strengths and weaknesses, complete with expert advice on editing and printing with a computer.
Based on many years of research, experiment, and practical experience, this handy guide will get novices off the ground with ease, and even the most advanced bird photographers will find their work soaring to new heights.
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| Customer Reviews:
Pass on This March 23, 2006
44 out of 44 found this review helpful
"Photographing Birds" is a pocket-sized book aimed at covering the full gamut of bird photography from equipment to a short list of places to take photographs of birds. In between, chapters include luring and stalking birds, photographing nesting and flight and special challenges like night photography and winter photography.
This book is apparently an update of a previous National Geographic book entitled "National Geographic Photography Field Guide: Birds". While I did not read that prior volume, this book has the feel of a job of cutting and pasting. For example, in the Getting Started chapter, there is an extensive discussion of film in the main text and then some sections that feel like they had just been appended on digital photography. The same section contains a discussion of catadioptric (mirror) lenses. No bird photographer I know would consider using such a lens today.
Two of the basic problems that any bird photographer will face are exposure and focus. There is no discussion in this book of how one might compensate for different lighting conditions and bird tonalities. There is a reference to the histogram, one of the most useful devices that digital SLR cameras offer for the control of exposure, but no explanation of this function. With regard to focus most modern cameras offer a choice between single focus and continuous focus and the selection of one or the other can greatly affect the images taken, but there is virtually no mention in this book.
The basic shortcoming is that while the book recognizes the problems of bird photography, there is very little practical advice. Even such a basic subject as depth-of-field is not included in the book.
For several years the gold standard for bird photography has been "The Art of Bird Photography" by Arthur Morris. It doesn't cover digital photography but it's still a lot more useful than this book. Morris has an e-book on digital bird photography which is available from his web site, but which he is not yet offering in a printed version.
The bottom line is that I cannot recommend this book for any photographer.
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