Joe’s Book Club: Chapter Seven

by | Jun 25, 2022

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

Recently a reader asked, “Why don’t you include more photography books in your Book of the Week, it’s a photography how-to Blog after all?” In answering this question, here’s a couple of points that I would like you to keep in mind:

  1. Any books that I review are those sent to me by their publishers; I can’t afford to buy books to review because at this point, the blog is not self-sustaining.
  2. These days, one or two publishers occasionally send me books to review. I like to review those books that, I think, will appeal to my readers and typically don’t, with few exceptions, review books by social media influencers because these are typically just money grabs by the publishers.
  3. Books that I don’t review and some that I do—I keep very few—are donated to my local library who sells them in an in-library store to fund future book purchases.
  4. And finally, in the last Book Club, a photography book was featured as is today.

I would like to give some of these books away to readers but, for me, the cost of shipping is a consideration. They’re heavy and even the USPS Book Rate is not free. (See my point Number One.) If you can think of a way to easily do that, click CONTACT and let me know. Right now I have a small stack of books that would make great giveaways but they may already be donated to the library by the time you read this.

Most importantly, if you are a writer or a book publisher who would like me to review one of your books, I’ll give any books sent to me prompt and undivided attention and then review them here in the Book Club. The address to send book(s) to me is at the bottom of this post.

Book of the Week

The Magic Lantern Guides by various authors. Magic Lantern Guides have been around seemingly forever. Originating in Germany, the US publishers have included Silver Pixel Press but the last book in the series appears to have been Magic Lantern Guides: Canon EOS 7D that was published in 2010 by Sterling Publishing Company. These were the go-to books back when there were lots of local camera stores and a new film camera wasn’t sold without including a $19.95 add-on for the Magic Lantern Guide for that specific camera.

Historically the User’s Guide for most cameras were poorly written and translated, although every now and a Japanese company would hire an American writer to re-write the manuals in idiomatic English. That’s not to say the manuals were better; they weren’t. The Magic Lantern Guides filled in the gaps providing a real hands-on look at actually using the camera.

By way of full disclosure: I was co-author along with  German writer Artur Landt of the Canon Elan 7/7E Guide and author of the Pentax K100D/K110D Guide.

As of this writing it doesn’t appear that any new Magic Lantern Guides are being published which is sad because instead of supplying better camera manuals, manufacturers are providing skimpier ones while at the same time making their cameras more complex to use. My friend Barry Staver has taken to downloading pages of Panasonic’s PDF manual for his Lumix GH5, printing pages and keeping them in his camera backpack. Yet the Magic Lantern Guides were deliberately sized—4.5 x 0.5 x 7—to easily slip into a camera bag.

Case in point: Superficially, all Canon A-series film SLRs seem to look alike but they are not. The shutter release, film advance lever and film rewind knob are in the same place but everything else is different. When loading a new roll of film into my Canon A-1 for my “frame a day” project, I struggled finding how to set my ISO speed. I could see the ISA/ASA dial but in these beautifully analog cameras there are lots of buttons and knobs and interlocks (Oh, my) everywhere because there’s no LCD screen to bury controls deep into menus. I found what I needed on line thanks to Mike Butkus. If you use his site, please give him a donation for his service to the film camera community. But what I really needed was a Magic Lantern Guide and found one on eBay in Like New condition for eight bucks that covered four of the A-series cameras but not the AV-1 or AL-1. No internet connection is needed and the book easily slips into a pocket in my classic black Domke F-2 Original Shoulder Bag.

If you shoot a film SLR (and some older digital cameras) eBay and Amazon have many of the Magic Lantern Guides available at similarly reasonable prices. Get’em, while you can.

But all is not perfect in the Magic Lantern Guide world: The instructions in the MLG that I bought said this about setting the film speed on a Canon A-1: “To set the film speed you must lift up slightly on the outer rim of the dial and rotate the dial until the desired film speed is aligned with a white index mark on the rotating dial rim.” This may be true for some A-series cameras but not the A-1. On the Butkus website the actual Canon manual reads: “To set the ISO, press in the film speed dial lock with your fingernail until the desired film speed is aligned with the film index.” It’s not only correct but more succinct.

If you would like to send me books to review or any other stuff that could be used for these posts, on my car photography blog and my videos you can mail it to: Joe Farace, PO BOX 2081, PARKER, CO 80134

PS: Just a reminder: Podcast #4 is live now on my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos, featuring a look at a look at my Snap a Frame a Day National Photo Month project, response to a Q&A that reveals a fanboy confession and an unboxing related to a previous Q&A