David Busch’s Canon EOS R7 Guide to Digital Photography

1 review for David Busch’s Canon EOS R7 Guide to Digital Photography

1. 

   Gloria February 13, 2023

   If there is a manual for one of my cameras by David Busch, I inevitably want to read it. His books are always useful, well written, and a joy to read. You want to keep his manuals around for as long as you have the camera! As usual, he begins this book with the initial set-up of your camera, which is brilliant. Of course you want to use your camera before you finish the manual, so the author lets you know how to set it up without making you go halfway through the manual.

   Also, at the beginning, he has a great section on the touchscreen. I know it’s been around for a while, but I always have a problem figuring it out, and Busch laid it out for me. He points out that the new screens are capacitive and not resistive so that you don’t have to press down to make a choice by touch. I would not have known that, so thank you! Loved his section on autofocus, including subject tracking. Busch points out to us that tracking and selected focus area are two different things and spells out the implications. He understands what we need to know and what we might miss.

   In his chapter on advanced techniques he covers not only long and short exposures, but three different ways to take long exposures. He also talks about self-timers and time lapse exposures and, of course, star trails.

   The author talks a bit about which lenses to use and how to adapt lenses to non-mirrorless cameras. He also tells us about image stabilization, how it works, and how we benefit from it. He does point out that one downside is stabilization can slow down your shooting time, so that, if you are worried about split-second timing, you might want to turn it off. I don’t think I have read that elsewhere. The author really does try to cover everything he can imagine for us.

   He includes two entire chapters on using flash which, if I ever do that, will be of great assistance. I noticed that he talks a little about many models of speedlites so that you are covered regardless of you flash type.

   His chapter on using natural light and indoor lighting helpfully distinguishes incandescent from tungsten from halogen light, their advantages and disadvantages. This is a chapter I will return to repeatedly when I’m shooting portraits of family members inside. I appreciate his taking the time to explain the effects of light sources.

   At the end of the book he talks about customizing both the shooting menu and the autofocus menu, and I don’t think he misses anything in his description to us of our options in those areas. For example, he devotes three whole pages to how to achieve multiple exposure images, and what your choices are there. That is so much more helpful than a quick paragraph tossed off.

   The last couple of chapters include one on playback options and a brief piece on playback creative filters, which I did not even know existed. It’s great too, that, throughout the book, the author will give us his recommendation if he has one but often leaves it up to us. I do appreciate that if he has a strong opinion on what choice we should be making he lets us know. For example, he suggests we disable the “view from last seen“ choice on playback. We want to see our most recent images immediately he tells us, and I think he’s right 🙂 On the other hand, he tells us to enable “highlight alert”, which I think is exactly the right choice.

   At the end of the book Busch goes through detailed and extensive information on the set-up menu options such as the touch control, movie recording options, file, numbering, auto rotating, and so forth. I appreciate the detail there, because, with so much in front of us to work with in the menu, it helps to have a good guide — that’s what Busch is.

   What this author is great at, besides clear exposition, is that he seems to be able to predict what the new and even the advanced user need to know, and there it is. As far as I can tell, he omits nothing that we need to know, and he goes into great and useful detail. I would always recommend getting a camera book by David Busch if it’s available for your model. You can’t go wrong.