"Shooting Digital"

[Darrell Hinton]

I was just wondering if anyone has read Marcus van Bavel's book "Shooting Digital" (not to be confused with "Shooting Digital: Pro Tips...." by Mikkel Aaland, or with "Shooting Digital Video" by Jon Fauer)?

Marcus van Bavel is the Owner/Chief Engineer at www.dvfilm.com, a company that does film transfers. I recently e-mailed him to see which camera he thought gave the best quality digital to film transfer, between the XL1s and the DVX100 (by the way, the answer came back as "the DVX100 is much much better"). He suggested I pick up a copy of the book "Shooting Digital", which he wrote (found here: www.dvfilm.com/book.htm).

So, I checked out the link and read about the book and it sounded like a pretty good book for the technical aspects of digital video. The site says of the book:

"Everything you need to know including selecting a camera, lighting, recording sound, editing, preparing for film transfer, promotion, marketing and distribution is found in this book. It is updated and printed several times a year and contains the latest information. The new edition contains an entire chapter on how to use the new Panasonic DVX100 24P MiniDV camera."

That all sounds like very useful material, especially the last part about the entire chapter on the DVX100, which I plan on purchasing very soon. The book costs $35 (+S&H) and you can only buy it from his site, as far as I know (I checked amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com and couldnt find it). The only thing that stopped me from immediately getting the book is that $35 seemed a little bit steep for a 195-page book. Although, if it is as useful as it sounds it would be a worthy investment.

So I was just wanting to know if anyone here has read the book or heard anything about it? If so, what did you/whoever you talked to think about it? I plan on purchasing the book if there are no absolutely horrible thoughts on the book or if no one here knows anything about it. If the latter is the case, I will let you know what I think about it after I read it. Also, if anyone has read this and other similar books, and you think another book is superior, please let me know what that particular book is called.

Thanks for your time and responses.

[Rob Lohman]

Have you read the "free" first chapter of the book? That might
give you an impression of the writing (didn't look very elaborate
to me, but I just scanned the text).

Anybody actually read it?

[Ken Tanaka]

This appears to be what's sometimes called (in the book publishing trade) a "vanity" work. Such books are independently printed and self-published, usually with the goal of self-promotion. That doesn't necessarity mean it's a bad book. But, if it fits that model, it does mean that it probably hasn't undergone very rigorous editing and may contain a bit of drum-beating for the author and his company.

If I was looking for an all-in-one overview book I'd be inclined to get "The Digital Filmmaking Handbook" by Ben Long and Sonja Schenck. It flies by nearly all of the requisite involved topics in an informative way.