Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Dead Trees
there. When we keep subsidizing the magazine, there is no reason for them to change.
-- Reuven K, June 1, 2002
I previously recommended the UK title Camera & Darkroom (formerly Darkroom User)magazine on
this page. This is sadly no longer published.
Another title, that concentrates more on photographs and less on equipment is Black and White
Photography. It is available outside the UK by subscription and through Barnes & Noble. It also features
Michael Johnston among its columnists. Read what he has to say about it in his column from November
2002, titled On Photography magazines.
-- Simon Evans, March 11, 2003
I'd like to say that while magazines are a nice weekly boost to enthusiasm, they contain, generally
speaking, a lot of calendar art pictorialism and not a lot of genuinely good photography. Books may be
more expensive in the short term, but a few good volumes on technique will teach you all you need to
know about the mechanics of photography without recourse to the simplistic (and often repeated) advice
in magazines. Similarly, studying the works of the masters will enlighten and inform your photography
more than a sub-editor's critique of readers' submissions. Also, if you can build up a collection of good
books then you will be taking in a wider, and likely unique, field of influences as opposed to being one
of 200,000+ readers of a popular magazine which, by definition, has to appeal to a narrower, more
general taste. As others have pointed out here, many of the magazines are little more than catalogues for
the photography equipment industry anyway.
-- Gregor MacEwan, March 28, 2003
For phototography books, there are none more essential than the latest edition of the Ansel Adams series
(1980s). Book 1 on cameras and Book II, The Negative (which might instead be entitled Exposure) are
basic to the understanding of photography, film or digital. As to The Negative, when using color film,
think of controlling scene brightness range by placing your shadow to highlight readings in Zones III to
VII, and development being a constant. Manipulation of the brightness range through over or
underdevelopment as discussed in The Negative, doesn't apply. Thus, understanding the Zone System is
all the easier for color photographers. Learn how to read overall scene brightness range and see what
portion of that scene will fit into the ability of the film to capture the III to VII range.
-- CPeter Jørgensen, January 13, 2005
For fans of analog or older processes, or even a history of these, I highly recommend William
Crawford's The Keepers of Light: A History and Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes. Also,
for identifying older print processes, there's James M. Reilly's Care and Identification of 19th-Century
Photographic Prints. I think these may both be out of print; I know the Reilly is, but worth looking for.
http://www.photo.net/books/ (17 of 20)7/3/2005 2:23:26 AM