2026-07-27 Digital Photography for Beginners

Digital Photography for Beginners is a series of magazines—this is the seventh edition—that was released until April 11^th, 2016. It sold for US$29.99 or $34.99 Canadian. It is a United Kingdom publication.

On the cover they claim there will be over 500 essential tips. I believe it too, as the pages are dense with steps, captions about equipment, inset headers and all sorts of other set dressings. To make up for all the typographical flourishes many of the two page spreads will be on something so simple it is hard to believe you are going to progress beyond being a “Beginner”.

The first subject—Getting Started—is purported to be the essential techniques you need to master. It has exactly ten steps—including shutter speeds, aperture and white balance— that take seventeen pages before you are now capable of the Modes and Settings chapter. You will progress on to Shooting Skills, Starter Projects, Editing and Sharing before you hit the Reference Glossary at page 172.

In one typical layout—we will describe “The complete guide to focusing”—there will be a title, with a subhead mentioning “Pin-sharp” then three columns of text and we haven’t even hit mid page. Then there are two smaller images with a text caption inserted over the left image’s lower left corner. Below that there is a black area with four images arranged horizontally. This subsection has a header, a subhead and under the images there are captions with bolded headers.

In comparison the facing page is a full size image—supposedly the best of the shoot—with small text inset to all four corners. All text inserts look different—

there is a caption with header

a piece of artwork showing shutter speed and aperture with an arrow connecting it to an explanation

a white spot with a “lightbulb” observation (both a lightbulb graphic and caption with header)

and finally a white rectangular area headed “Jargon Buster” with three subsections.

There is a lot to be said for wading your way through such a project as this publication. Many, many (bet you over 500!) points will be gone over in slightly different ways until by sheer osmosis you will have learned digital photography. I consumed it a bit at a time, and considering the graphic nature of the learning, and the almost total lack of any advertising, I would have to say the almost book priced magazine is a reasonable value.

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