Review of "Digital Wildlife Photography" by David Tipling

Author David Tipling divides his attention equally between the artistic and technical issues to teach you about wildlife photography in the digital age. Having a solid foundation in the traditional camera era, I have usually felt that the inexpensive point-and-shoot digitals that I have relied on over the years have only begun to approach the quality of the images I could produce with my trusty Canon A-1 or even my first SLR, the classic Minolta SRR-101. But with prices for DSLRs falling to within the reach of a broad audience of amateurs like me, its clear that the current crop of consumer-level DSLRs can produce very high quality images. Tipling's qualifications as a wildlife photographer are enviable, and he brings his professional experience to bear in teaching how to approach your subjects, and frame them in a pleasing manner. Then he takes you through the technical issues of working with digital images for both print and electronic reproduction. Naturally, he bases much of his lessons on Adobe Photoshop. I was pleased to see him pay special attention to the RAW image format that is popular among professionals for reducing the artifacts produced by the software that digital cameras use to enhance and compress images for storage on memory cards. On top of all that, the pictures in the book are stunning. What a bargain!