Fantastic!

I have just bought this book and only really to get my free postage on my order - but what a great book! I only have a passing inerest in photography but often wondered how people got shots like they do. This book is presented in an easy to understand format and don't take any notice about the negative remarks about humour - it's there for a reason, to fix the ideas in your memory. I'm going to order the second volume as well.

Right on the money!

Upon watching dozens of newcasts on the recent financial meltdown, I was just impressed at the amount of so called"experts" getting it ridiculously wrong a few weeks later. I then pursued relevant literature on the subject and Taleb is right on the money: widespread epistemic arrogance! Truly enjoyable book!
The only less positive point that doesn't merit 5 star is some disorganization in the flow of ideas. I fell a smaller more incisive prose could have transmitted the thesis faster and better.
I also found the sometimes aggressive rhetoric against the"experts" gives the prose some color!. Nobody should take it personally but instead look at it with some sense of humor.

The book helps !

I bought this book after reading the reviews as I'm not into too technical stuff...

It's a very handy book which nicely and in easy terms (I'm not an native English speaker) explains about composition, what our eyes see or focus on and therefor why we better take a photo this or that way.

The book contains many example photographs which makes it even easier to see what the author means.

Great Book Even For Pro's

I've been a wedding photographer for 25 years. I thought this was going to be another"how to take photos book". I've liked other Scott Kelby books so whilst in a bookstore picked it up just for a quick glance, but was suprised to see how much detail he went into. Each page being a new subject, it gave a detailed taster of each subject without all the waffle many books have, and then gave links to websites where you could read more or get equipement that is hard to find. To me it was worth it just for those hard to find links.

Includes A Poster Map....

I'm in agreement with the content of the other reviews, although I tend to read the relevant sections after I've completed the tasks/missions, just out of further interest....

The only thing I will add is this volume DOES include an A3 double sided poster map with all Zones and places marked on it, which I have found to be very useful. This is not clear on the product information.

FANTASTIC

Barbara's books about Elements are a necessary and sufficient condition for getting the best out of it. If you need to know it, it's there, and if it's not there, you don't need to know it.

for newcomers

This book is brilliant if you are new to DSLR photography and the manual that comes with the camera confuses you-like it did me! I have learnt so much and have already been practising with it. Things have made sense and I have to reread it to then put it into practice, i can see me taking this book on holiday and not the manual!

Fantastic book for DSLR beginners!

In a nutshell - this is everything you need as a DSLR beginner. Concise, to the point, and, quite simply, well explained. You won't get better. Buy this book if you want to progress quickly and understand the manual settings on your DSLR.

A Cracking Edition of For Dummies

After Purchasing Vista and not being able to get to grips with it my dad got me this book,

it explains in great detail how to do everything that you need to do, it uses friendly language and does not insult your intelligence like some books.

I got the one with the free DVD which i have found very useful.

Amazon are the cheapest retailers of this product that i have seen, it comes wrapped in a standard Amazon packaging -- however you must be at home for delivery as it does not fit through your letter box :(

In All buy this book, you will find it useful, either that look on Google and find the answers for free :P

The best book I've read for DSLR beginners

A real creative education from a proper photographer. Easy to read, and packed full of tips and tricks. Get this one.

Fantastic book

I really enjoyed this book. It's packed full of really good quality photos and great expert tips. The book runs in sequence, so you learn about concealer, for example, before eye make up. All in all, a fantastic book that i will use again and again. Her best book yet!

Amazing

This is a great walkthrough guide to the game - great tips for xbox 360. Would highly recommend it.

Much better than expected

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)
Excellent book that I have learned more from in a week than I did from Rob Sheppard's Lightroom 1 book in several months. I know that some people find Scott's casual style a bit irritating, but it is not at all intrusive in this book. In fact I think it helps me to remember things. Screen shots linked directly to the"stepped" approach, provide both a readable book and a reference work. The practical"real life" approach suits me and I would think many other photographers - Thoroughly recommended!

Buy it

Joe McNallys has a wonderfull way of writing, I've just come on Amazon to buy his new book.

The way he tells the story of each picture, what happened, how he had to find ways arround tricky real life situations giving simple and inexpensive real life tips, was inspiring fun and heart warming.

There wasn't a page I thought I wouldnt bother reading because I knew about that. In fact I couldn't wait to turn the page to the next story and I learnt so much.

A great book which I would highly recommend to anyone who want to be a little more creative.

To many abbreviations and rather dry

I think this is an OK but there are to many abbreviations of words and after reading half the book it becomes very dry and uninteresting.(paint drying moments)

I am sure this book would help you move up the google rankings, but from a programmers perspective I believe you can find all you want on googles website and related forums. Think I wasted my money here.

Cheers

Great book! Easy to understand

I have just bought an unbelievable MacBook, ( I previously owned a G4 running Tiger) I was a bit worried because I know Snow Leopard is on its way in summer 2009, so upgrades will date this book. However this book is easy to understand and full of logical short cuts. The only drawback is that because I have used a Mac for years a lot of the book contains information I know about. I will purchase the IPhoto manual by the same author simply because I was so impressed and I am finding that IPhoto 08 7.1.5 is very different from the IPhoto I had on my G4. This book would make any Mac Leopard owner a great Xmas present.

All of the basics - and more!

Just like the method of web design he advocates, Steve Krug explains his craft in a simple, logical manner.

A common sense approach to web design? Yes it certainly is, and as someone who is used to ploughing through text heavy web design and online marketing textbooks, this book is a welcome relief. It is well laid out, logically progressive, while still being easy to dip in and out of as necessary.

The chapters dealing with the guiding principles of web design give simple and, sometimes obvious, basic advice, but somehow the way in which they are delivered still manages to stimulate your creative processes. The later chapters dealing with the internal politics of designing a corporate website with multiple stakeholders shows excellent insight, and gives good practical advice about how to manage this process.

This book is for beginners and experts alike and, despite being relatively short, still delivers comprehensive coverage of the subject.

Quite Poor

Some game guides (such as the ones for Final Fantasy XII or the fantastic hardback for the Collector's Edition of Fallout 3) are well-designed mines of information that deserve to be almost permanently open by your side when playing the game. You would think from its size that this guide deserves to join that illustrious company. Think again.

Full colour printing may seem like no expense has been spared, but most of the screenshots here are pretty ugly, uninformative, too large (so they are pixellated) or so small that they tell you nothing at all. Visually, the book has very little pleasure to offer.

As far as content goes, the story is even worse. There are some useful tips on dungeons and the quest series for the new class (Death Knight) but nothing so useful that you would really want it, and telling players who have already devoted over a hundred hours to the game (on several occasions) that they are going to need a healer, a tank and DPS for an instance is a waste of time. Shockingly, this book only covers four of the instance dungeons and does not even list the remaining dungeons (except as part of the Achievement page): if you want to progress any further than Drak'Tharon Keep, then you're on your own!

In some cases the guide is actually less informative than the in-game information. It doesn't list cooldowns or casting times on spells and only gives the same text that you can see in the game, with no further advice. In the case of the Death Knight class you are given some pointers on abilities, but no real information at all on the talent paths. For no talent does the guide tell you the percentage enhancement: possibly for fear that the developers will change this and render the guide obsolete. Nevertheless - even if you make allowances for the fact that the guide was produced as the game was being balanced by its creators - the talent trees in this book are less useful than any on-line calculator because the icons are not even labelled with the name of the talent. This is unforgivably bad design, because you would have to remember the icon and find on the next page if you wanted to make sense of it.

I spent some minutes trying to find information on the new Priest top tier ability (Penance) before realising that the authors have separated spell abilities available to all members of a class from those awarded by talent points. (I think that most players will want to be able to find a list of the things they can put on their spellbar separate from the talents that affect the mathematics behind the game.) The way in which abilities are arranged (alphabetically rather than by the level at which they become available) is also confusing. For ease of use, I'd give this book a very low overall score.

For the new Inscription profession you get a list of all glyphs but no account of what effect they have, which again renders it almost completely useless as a guide. There should have been a guide to all the glyphs for each class since existing players will want advice on how best to employ a powerful new enhancement system.

Page after page is taken up with lists of quests with no account of how to complete them or the stats on the quest rewards. No one with an up-to-date quest add-on will even bother with this, whereas really useful knowledge about developing appropriate stats on characters is completely ignored.

This book is quite cheap given all the work that went into producing it, and obsessive fans of the game will certainly find some useful pages here and there, such as the detailed list of the new Achievement system. If you don't buy this, though, you really aren't going to miss it.