Rating  - Good value for beginners
I subscribed to this magazine a few months ago. Via Amazon, or the magazine itself, it's about a dollar an issue. For that price, you really can't go wrong. I'm a relative amateur, and I'm starting to look for ways to get better. "Popular Photography" provides me with information and tips that a beginner can use to improve his or her photos. I can see that the magazine would be less useful to more advanced amateurs or to pros; "Photo Techniques" would be a better resource for those people. Indeed, I may subscribe to that magazine when my subscription to "Popular Photography" runs out. Nevertheless, I am a happy subscriber to "Popular Photography," and I am satisfied with the magazine.
Rating  - Good product reviews
I've been a reader of Popular Photography for some time and find it useful, but certainly not perfect. The strength of the magazine is that the testing of cameras and related gear is very quantitative in nature and allows you to compare similar products objectively. This is obviously the first priority of the editorial staff and they do a good job of it. The only thing I would fault on their reviews is that they aren't always pointed enough in pointing out one product's shortcomings compared to others in the same category. They do, however, offer more of this type of feedback than just about any other magazine I've seen so it is a relative weakness at worst. Some magazines, like Shutterbug, just offer gushing subjective reviews for every product they cover and Popular Photography definitely lives up to a much higher standard.
With regard to the remaining content, the magazine plummets in terms of quality. There are frequent "how to" articles that have sunk to a point of being almost laughable. Never a strong point, in the past six months I've seen more and more articles demonstrating techniques to achieve an effect in some photo that I would delete if I had taken it... yet it's held up as some sort of shining goal that I should aspire to. It seems to this reader that the editorial staff needs a good shake up and the magazine a good going-over from top to bottom to get things on track.
Overall, I consider this magazine worth subscribing to. But only barely. At the low per-issue cost of a subscription I'll get enough product information to make it worth my while. But if you aren't into photo gear and have no intention of buying a camera in the next year or so I don't think I'd recommend it for you.
Rating - Good Photography Magazine
I won't repeat the other reviewers too much, but this is a good general purpose magazine. The biggest benefit is the magazine's product reviews. At just about $1/issue, this is a decent read. A portion of the magazine is dedicated to ads like most other publications, but the good content stays up front.
They have some good travel pieces and will have some informative technical articles at times. The technical pieces vary in the degree of difficulty. Sometimes they are very beginner and other times they are more informative and advanced. Overall, the magazine is a good buy at the subscription price.
Rating  - Uninspired Magazine of Limited Usefulness
As others have said, this magazine is maybe useful if you're a total beginner. Every issue is essentially the same--so much so that I can't even tell them apart from looking at the covers. Also if you own a camera already, much of the magazine is irrelevant product reviews.
This magazine truly caters to the lowest common denominator. Letters to the editors are petulant and unnecessary (one even complained about the use of the word "photo" instead of "photograph"). Don't expect a single to issue to go by without some uninformed digital vs film mudslinging.
This magazine is not about photography as art so much as photography as a technical process. The pictures included are usually techincally very good and aesthetically interesting, but very very conventional landscapes, wildlife, and portraits. Don't expect any innovation and risk here. For a magazine that focuses on the art of photograpy consider something like JPG magazine.
If you're a beginner this may help you out, and if you're on the market for a new piece of equipment the reviews could be useful. Otherwise, expect to find the same information rehashed ad nausium, ignorant pundants trying to sound important, and columns and articles that manage to spend several pages saying nothing. Oh, and you can see some nice but generic pictures.
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Customer Reviews for Hachette Magazines, Inc.,B00005N7SB, |
