Complete Digital Photography, 4th Edition
by Ben Long
Charles River Media
ISBN-13: 978-1-58450-4; ISBN-10: 1-58450-520-6
566 pages plus Mac/Windows CD included
$39.99 US, $50.95 CN

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Ben Long’s latest masterpiece is the best single one-volume comprehensive text on digital photography we’ve seen at Book Bytes in a LONG (excuse the pun) time. Learn more about this book and author, in an extensive interview, the first in our new series.

Q. From the perspective of being the author, Ben, and working with your publisher, what are the advantages and drawbacks of including a comprehensive CD containing image files, plus QuickTime and PDF tutorial lessons?

A. As an author, the CD is really liberating in a couple of ways. When I’m revising a book and page counts get tight, it’s a real luxury to have the CD — a place where I can offload older material that’s still got some relevance. As a teaching tool, it’s nice to be able to shore up areas of the book with interactive QuickTime examples, and additional PDF material. Being able to put deeper information on the disk means I don’t have to break up the flow of the book with material that’s a little out of the mainstream, but still important enough that it needs to be covered somewhere. While I personally still prefer books when I want to learn something, there are some situations that are better-covered with an interactive video. It’s great that an inexpensive media exists to deliver this extra content.

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