Tak chek time

That quite literally means “Study books time”.:)

But seriously, the last two of three books I’ve put on my photography reading list finally arrived from Amazon.com several days ago. I’ve ordered stuff from Amazon.com before, and they’ve typically arrived in about a fortnight. But these two books took a horrendously long time i.e. 6 weeks to get here. I’d been initially hoping that they’d arrive in tome for our Ayara Hilltops trip in June. It’s a bit of a letdown, because books on Amazon.com with shipping costs added are still cheaper than buying them from Kinokuniya even with members’ 20% discounts. But oh well. At least I get to enjoy them over the next couple of weeks in addition to the several other photography and travel books borrowed from the library.

The three most recent books now are:

Martin Evening’s Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers. A heavy weight tome on CS3. It’s not as accessible as Scott Kelby’s wholly function-centric book, but I frequently check this book to figure out how to do something in the software. Bought it from Kinokuniya with a 20% discount a fortnight ago.

Complete Digital Photography by Ben Long. This book is the fourth edition and the most recent edition in a pretty successful series. Kinokuniya had a copy of this in stock but it’d been handled badly by browsers, so this came from Amazon.com. I was initially a little apprehensive about getting a general photography book but this book is amazing and really insightful with a lot of tips to offer. E.g. a couple of my panoramic shots at Phuket had distortion and I couldn’t understand what caused it. And now after reading this book’s section on panoramic pictures, I know why now; and the advice in those 4 pages alone is important enough to justify the entire book’s purchase. The book even has notes on Astrophotography (!!!).

David Busch’s Nikon D300 by erm David Busch. Ordered this book from Amazon.com because it’s not available at Kino. Busch writes a ton of model-specific books, but of the several commercial D300 books and guides available, this one’s reportedly the most informative and best. Camera manuals are typically functional explanations that don’t really tell how to best use the equipment under circumstances, and the D300 manual while rich with information isn’t different So, while being partial geek I can understand (with some effort) the supplied manual just fine, Busch’s book gives me a lot more information that I can pack on the go when I don’t have a wireless connection to surf for info.

All three books cover the three central topics I need; CS3, Photography, and the camera. So, happy camper I am now with loads of books for night-time reading.:)