A Short Course in Canon PowerShot SX20 IS Photography book/ebook

This book/eBook package is your guide to getting more interesting and creative photos with the 12 megapixel Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. It discusses every camera setting on this high-quality camera in a clear, well-illustrated style, with many integrated tips and easy-to-follow QuickSteps, but it also does much more. You'll also learn the concepts of photography as you learn why and when you use specific settings, not just how to set them. You'll find that this guide helps you quickly master your camera so you'll be able to get the kinds of photos you had hoped for.

The printed edition of the book is black & white and has a well-liked spiral binding that lets the book lie flat or be folded back on itself.

The eBook edition of the book, available as an instant download or on a CD disc, is a printable and searchable full-color version of the same book in Adobe's popular PDF format. You can print it out in whole or part in high resolution, and read it on a PC or Mac using the free Acrobat Reader, or any up-to-date Web browser. This eBook also includes clickable links to 50 or so animations, movies and other resources that illustrate the core concepts of digital photography such as exposure compensation, lens focal lengths, histograms, and much, much more. (To use these animations you do need an Internet connection.)

Just some of the things you'll learn in this book are how to take pictures in fully automatic point and shoot mode and how your camera captures digital images; how to play back and manage your images; how to use buttons, dials, and menus; control image size and quality; use all of the camera's exposure modes and exposure controls to get photos that show the scene exactly as it is, or as you want to interpret it; use histograms for the best possible exposures; see how to control sharpness in your photographs; and how to use focus, depth-of-field, sharpness, softness, and blur creatively. Learn all about light and color and how to take advantage of them. Understand how they change throughout the day and seasons, how they're affected by the weather, and how light's direction and quality affects highlights and shadows. See how to set white balance to capture colors the way you see them. Learn how to use your zoom lens creatively when photographing scenery, interiors, people, and very small subjects. See how to creatively use the built in, and optional external flash, indoors and out and in good light and bad, and how to use studio lighting for product shots and portraits. Explore little known but essential flash techniques such as fill and slow sync flash. Finally, see how to capture panoramas, use continuous photography and capture HD movies with stereo sound; control the tonal range, capture movies; customize the camera to better suit your shooting style; and much, much more.