In the never-ending quest to learn to take semi-decent pictures, I read through the Digital Photography Field Guide by Cynthia L. Baron and Daniel Peck (Peachpit Press). This is a small, easy to read and understand book on getting the most out of your digital camera.
The chapters: Before You Shoot: Buying Guide; Digital Camera Basics; Photographing People; Capturing Motion; Indoor Places; Outdoor Places; After You Shoot; Digital Camera Troubleshooting; Index
For what this book is and for the intended audience, it's pretty good. The book starts out by explaining how a digital camera works and what the basic features are that you'll want to have. From there, it covers a number of shooting situations you'll experience in the real world, and what camera features you can use to best handle the scene. For instance, trying to shoot good sporting pictures is difficult. The latency between when you click the shutter and when the picture records means that you'll most likely end up getting the split second AFTER the perfect shot. Not good. But the authors show you how to anticipate the action to compensate for latency. The other option is to set for continuous shooting so that a single click will produce a series of shots that will bracket the moment and increase your chances of the perfect picture.
The serious photographer will already know most of this information, so they probably won't get much value out of the book. But if you're a novice and aspire to understand your camera and the art of photography better, this is a good starting point.
