Light and Film

This is the best book in the Life Library of Photography series. I acquired the collection in the early 1970s, as a young teenager and budding photographer, and I have returned to it many times through the years, particularly the "Light and Film" volume. Though out of print, this book is even relevant to today's digital photography because, fundamentally, the properties of light and the capturing of images, whether on film or on digital light receptors, remains true all across Newtonian time and space. (If you get into the Einsteinian realm, you're on your own.) The book is moderately technical, but that is good, because it provides a depth that allows you to learn more with every reading. The basic lesson of the book is to see light from the film's perspective. I can't speak enough on how important that is for good, consistent, instinctual photography. The chapter on the 10-tone gray scale is the best single tool I have in my photographic arsenal. I use what I learned from that chapter EVERY DAY when I use Photo Shop to adjust the blacks, whites, and grays of my images...