The most comprehensive, accessible, and completely up-to-date guide available for today’s photographer: whether beginner or advanced, using a film camera or digital.

Award-winning photographer Tom Ang provides a thorough, explicitly detailed bottom-to-top understanding of modern photography, explaining all the techniques that will help anyone who uses a camera—in a professional capacity or as a snapshot shooter—improve the quality of his or her photographs. Here is everything you need to know: from the most practical advice (the fundamental facts about light sources) to the most sophisticated nuances (how light is measured through photometry), from the basics of the camera (which button controls which function) to the finer points of framing with an LCD viewfinder, featuring a selection of Ang’s most inspiring images. For users of film cameras, Ang explains the differences between types of film and details the various methods of processing and darkroom techniques.

Ang delves into the development and transformation of photography by digital techniques. For the digital-camera contingent, there’s a specificity of previously unavailable information about the cameras and about processing, digitizing, and outputting the images. Ang also discusses subjects usually ignored in manuals but of interest to all photographers, including critical theory, the presentation of images, the function of the human eye in the perception of images, and ethical and copyright issues.

Fundamentals of Photography is an essential book for every photographer.