The Deep-sky Imaging Primer

I have lots of photography experience but knew very little about astro. So far (half way through) this book has proved to be exactly what I needed to transfer my existing skills and fill a lot of gaps. There's one reason why I couldn't give it five stars - there are too many typos! This book hasn't been very well proof-read and that slightly undermines your faith in it.

This is a really good book and should be read along with Getting started with Long Exposure Astrophotography - Allan Hall. If you are starting out in this field this is all you need. I would have preferred more detail in Chapter 15 - Calibration process. The author give details about Light / Dark / Flat / Bias frames that you need to capture but doesn't give an example so to some extent we are left in the dark. I haven't finished reading the book. I only got it yesterday.I certainly recommend this though. It has a lot technical details ( enough to keep you reading, not too much to make you yawn and put the book down never to lift it up).It has certainly given me a lot to go on and understand the underlying fundamentals about photons, trackng, image quality, etc etc .I would recommend it without hesitation to an amateur. I don't intend to put this book down any time soon.

This is a very impressive and fairly comprehensive book on deep sky astrophotography.The book covers everything from sensor chips and signal to noise ratios to suitable imaging targets and processing tips (including walkthroughs for DSLR and CCD imaging) and everything in between in a clear, concise and authoritative way.The book appears to be self-published and - in the UK at least - looks to have been digitally printed-on-demand but the quality of the many images stands up pretty well considering. There are a few more typographic errors than I would consider normal but the quality and breadth of the content is terrific.Calling the book a primer does it a bit of an injustice in my opinion as the content will keep good intermediate level imagers entertained and I am sure most amateur astrophotographers will get a lot out of it; it's a great next step on from Steve Richard's acclaimed Making Every Photon Count and is very highly recommended.

This book is written with an impresively clear voice. Charles Bracken does not back away from the complexities of digital imaging, but instead explain with clarity and patience. The book clearly adds to other more practical books by another level of depth in understanding and explanations. I can warlmy recommend to any astro imager, except perhaps the absolute beginner in the field, for whom there are better suited books.

The book does exactly what it says and a lot more. The layout is very easy to follow and the technical information is written in a clear and easy style which I found simple to follow.I would recommend this book to anyone starting out with Astrophotography.