I ordered this book in the hope that it goes beyond the typical beginner-to-intermediate photography books (e.g. rule of thirds, depth of field, etc.) and explains the theoretical and practical background of photography, like how lenses are designed and manufactured, how different sensors work, the theory of lighting, and so on. Judging by the table of contents before ordering, I saw that the potential is there.



After reading the book around halfway (even though the author recommends the readers to only read the chapters they are interested in), I still think the potential to be a good reference book is there. Some topics are more detailed than others, but on average, the information included in the book is adequate.



The one thing that makes this book very hard to read and to profit from, is a horrible writing style that makes me feel it has never seen an editor. There is almost no cohesion in the text: completely unrelated sentences follow each other, sometimes a single paragraph introduces two different topics, sometimes a paragraph simply repeats the previous one, slightly reworded. Some statements are overexplained, some are not explained at all (or perhaps much later, without any kind of referencing). And these do not happen occasionally, this is how the whole book (at least the half I've read so far) is written. As usual, this is topped off by the poorly done index.



All in all, this could be a classic reference for those interested in the theory of photography (mainly the technical parts), but it needs an almost complete rewrite for the next edition.