I bought this book at the same time I bought my first DSLR. I intended to use the book as a supplement to a 5-week class I took on digital photography and that is what I would recommend it for. As a stand-alone book, I am not sure that it would serve a novice photographer as well if it is used simply as an introduction and not in conjunction with an instructor-led course. The book provides great technical background and goes into a lot of detail about digital photography, not just photography. I wish it had more illustrations as the text becomes dry pretty quickly but then again, the merits of this book are its technical depth and details. There is a very long chapter on how to select a camera so if you have alrady bought one, this chapter would be pretty irrelevant to you. I still browsed it but keep in mind the book is a little dated in that respect. Nevertheless, I feel the book gave me a good foundtation and I definitely had a better graps of shutter speed, aperture, depth of field than everybody else in the class who relied on the instructor and the handout alone. I plan to continue using this book as a reference and expand my photo library with books on specific subjects/genres/techniques.Get more detail about Complete Digital Photography, 5th Edition.
