Review: Understanding Exposure

As promised, here is my review of Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson.


This book was recommended to me by a friend on Facebook, and I'm so glad he told me about it. This is such a straightforward book, with simple explanations and clear example photos. I would even argue that it is the only photography book you might ever need (I've read quite a few, you see).

Whether you're shooting with film or a digital camera, a point-and-shoot or an SLR/DSLR, this book has failsafe tips for how to take better pictures. Peterson not only offers easy ways to remember the math behind the perfect equations for aperture and shutter speed, he actually shows you how to then disregard those numbers to get an intuitive sense of what to do with your camera in different situations. Hyperfocal distance, for example, becomes a snap with one very simple technique he teaches you.


Depth of field also becomes painfully simple as Peterson shares his techniques and uses series of images to show the different effects that different lenses and aperture settings have on a subject in different kinds of light.


His goal is to have his readers walk away with a good understanding of not only what exposure would be correct for any given situation, but what settings would allow you to achieve the most creative photo in any given situation.


You'll learn how to most effectively use your camera's built-in meter, the advantages and disadvantages of everything from different lenses to point-and-shoot vs. SLR/DSLR cameras, how to get the best possible results when hand-holding your camera in low light, and how to use different factory settings in your camera (such as manual and shutter speed priority, etc.) and how to use what's around you to get an accurate exposure for the scene you want to capture.