This is quite a detailed book on photography: it includes scientific information, photography theory, and information on equipment and technique. It's good fondational book--not for beginners, necessarily--although it could be read by beginners or used in a college course for beginners. You would just need to be a serious student or someone with a scientific slant if you're going to start with this book. It's particular good, though, for those who have some experience in photography and want to go back and fill in gaps in your knowledge, to understand underlying concepts. One interesting aspect, incidentally, is the explanations of various camera formats over the past century or so. I thought I would never finish at first, but I took it with me on a vacation in a particular hot zone and where there wasn't much to do but nap and read during the day. I read this book thoroughly over a ten day and came out feeling like a much stronger photographer as a result.

), but I can't speak to that since I would by no means consider myself an "Advanced" photographer.

I'd recommend this book for the technically oriented person looking to learn the fundamentals of photography and its theory in depth. I would not recommend this book to someone who just enjoys taking pictures for fun and wants to learn more about taking good pictures.

In summary, an excellent technical resource (basically a textbook), but quite dry.

Great book! If you know a bit about photography and just need something to get you over the plateau of taking okay images to taking great pictures, this is the book! It explains everything from basics to advanced. I loved it. Explanations are in normal English at first but as you read on you develop a vocabulary that this book uses.