Canon EOS Rebel T2i/550D Digital Field Guide [Paperback]

This is a good guide to the relatively new (as of this writing) Canon EOS Rebel T2i/550D camera. The book's size is right (you can easily take it with you), it covers all the essentials of the Canon Rebel T2i, it is not too technical, and it's straightforward and easy to read (without needless attempts at constant humor). If you have never used a digital camera before, or if you are simply new to this specific camera, you should have no problem reading, understanding and using this guide. (Photography professionals or serious amateurs are not the target audience for this book.) The author, Charlotte Lowrie, is a professional photographer with 25 years of experience, a photography teacher, and an author of 14 other camera-related books. She should have her act down pat by now, and in my opinion, she does. Although there is a combination of camera-specific information and more generalized photography content throughout this guide, the first four chapters focus primarily on learning the specifics of the Rebel T2i. Chapter 1 starts right where you'd expect--the camera's controls: front, top, rear and side. The author also covers lens controls, media cards, choosing the file format, file numbering and more. Chapter 2 is all about exposure and focus. (After all, taking a photograph is basically the process of controlling how light is exposed to and focused on a light-sensitive sensor of one sort or another.) The reader learns about the various pre-programmed shooting modes, aperture and shutter controls, ISO (sensor sensitivity), metering modes, etc. Chapter 3 is all about getting your colors the way you want, and Chapter 4 focuses on customizing the Canon T2i for your use.

I'll spend less time on the remaining chapters in order not to run too long. Chapter 5 addresses shooting in live view and tethered. Chapter 6 covers using the movie mode on this camera, and Chapter 7 explores the use of flash. Chapter 8 is one of the most important chapters, in my view, since it addresses the question of the right lenses for your camera. The standard kit lens that comes with this camera is a decent value for the money, but you aren't going to be able to make full use of this remarkable camera without the right (better) lenses. If you don't already know, your investment in lenses may ultimately dwarf your investment in the camera itself.

Starting in Chapter 9, the author moves on to some of the creative aspects of photography. She covers elements of exposure and composition in Chapter 9, and then she moves on in Chapters 10, 11, and 12 to event and action photography, nature and landscape photography, and portrait photography, respectively.

So there you have it. In short, this is a very practical and useful guide. It's easy to read, has plenty of helpful color photos, and provides many detailed instructions--like "turn A, then press B, etc." It should prove to be quite useful for many Canon EOS Rebel T2i/550D owners.

I think my expectation might be a little different than what this book provides. It was mostly an introduction to photography while relating those terms to the use of the camera. There is alot of dulpication with the manual that comes with the camera. What I was looking for was something beyond photography for dummies. I wanted a book with tips and tricks that will produce better results as specifically related to the capabilities of the t2i. I think they have a standard book, and then insert the menue options for the camera they are covering. I wasn't impressed. The book seems very generic and it's like they took the camera manual and added pictures. The pictures they selected aren't even very good. I would just read the manual, and pick up a book on photography rather then this guide.

Having preordered this book and received a first printing, I'm looking at a book that has been rushed to market. The overall organization and intent of the book seems good, but the numerous errors are quite distracting. I'd advise waiting for a second printing and hope that the publisher puts some additional resources into proofreading in the meantime.

EDITED 6/4 TO ADD:

Now that I've finished reading the book, the above criticism stands.

However, I'm not so sure I'd recommend a later printing if the publisher only corrected the errors. The problems with this book go far beyond inaccuracies.

I hate to say it, but this is a book that's riddled with editorial neglect. This is the kind of writing that one expects to see on amateur blogs, not in a book released by a generally respected publisher like Wiley. I had always trusted WIley as a publisher based on the many excellent Wiley computer science and math texts from the 70s, 80s and 90s that remain in my permanent collection. Whoever was in charge of editing this Digital Field Guide, though, was clearly either pressed for time or not engaged by their task.

I'd guess that a full 20% or so of the space in this book is dedicated to tedious, repetitive, boring step-by-step instructions about which buttons to push in which order to gain access to the various camera functions. This style of copy-and-paste writing serves no other purpose than to pad the page count without committing the effort necessary to create useful content. Rather than repeating slight variations of the same instruction on every third or fourth page, the author really should have written *once* about how to navigate the menu system. Subsequent instructions could then have told the reader something like "you'll find the controls for this camera function located under the second shooting menu", eliminating nearly a half page of text and freeing up space for information that would actually make this book a useful adjunct to the Canon manual.

Indeed, my ire was raised when - during the discussion of picture styles - the Picture Style Editor program was introduced and dismissed (as "beyond the scope of this book") in a single sentence. I'll tell you this: it wouldn't have hurt one bit to spend a few pages on the PSE in exchange for some of the filler with which this book has been stuffed. The other Canon software, included free with the camera, gets equally short shrift. The valuable Digital Photo Professional is dismissed in a mere few pages as a "RAW file converter". Most of the other Canon software doesn't get even a single mention.

The section on lenses seems to suggest that not a lot of thought has gone into writing a book specifically about the T2i - or even about Canon's APS-C cameras in general - rather than adapting an old 35mm (or full-frame digital) EOS treatise to the digital age. The discussion about the relationship between focal lengths and lens function (wide angle, normal, telephoto) speaks at length to the 35mm (full-frame) format before adding a closing remark - literally an afterthought - about how the T2i's 1.6x crop factor affects the categorization of lenses. This full-frame bias appears throughout the book, consistently misrepresenting the nature of lenses that are only considered wide-angle on a full-frame camera.

The survey of lenses fails to use photographs to effectively illustrate most of the points made in the text. A brief and rather pointless discussion of bokeh (the character of the out-of-focus portion of an image) ends by punting to Ken Rockwell's web site. I have a strong dislike for books that rely on web sites - especially sites not provided by the publisher - to present supplementary content. If a subject is worth mentioning, it should be worth writing about. When I buy a book, I expect it to be self-contained. I don't want to turn to my computer for the rest of text; I especially don't want to have to deal with web URLs that may not even exist several years hence.

The final three chapters of the book - a mere 65 pages - save this book from being a complete loss. Reasonable advice is given regarding exposure and composition and about shooting events, nature and portraits. While there's some discussion of how various Canon EOS features support different shooting styles, the overall treatment given by these final three chapters is barely more than a brief survey. Still, this portion of the book offers something that you can't get from the Canon manual.

I strongly recommend looking elsewhere for your first book on the T2i. While the Digital Field Guide is the first to market, it offers nothing of value over the Canon manual other than verbosity and larger text.