Photographer's Guide to the Sony DSC-RX10 IV: Getting the Most from Sony's Advanced Digital Camera Paperback – Illustrated, November 29, 2017

There are two excellent guidebooks for the Sony RX10 IV: "Photographer's Guide to the Sony DSC-RX10 IV" by Alex White, and "The Friedman Archives Guide to the Sony RX-10 IV" by Gary Friedman. If you are serious about getting the most out this amazing camera, and want a shortcut through many hours of trial and error, I highly recommend buying both books.White's book is, as another reviewer said, the expanded guide that Sony should have written. It is thorough and well organized, with a detailed table of contents that makes it a pleasure to use as a reference. The explanations are clear and easy to understand, and White's own insights, though more sparing than Friedman's, are always valuable. In the Kindle version, this is a great traveling reference source.Gary Friedman is a very experienced and knowledgeable photographer, and also an engineer. His book can feel rambling and disorganized. His chatty style, self plugs, and obsession with emoticons will annoy some readers. The book is self-published, and, speaking for the Kindle version, it shows, in sloppy editing and formatting. Nevertheless, the book is also a treasure trove of valuable insights and practical wisdom, and I highly recommend it.I am reading the two books back to back (White first), topic by topic. For example, I will read White's guide to the Camera Settings 1 menu, and then, while that is still fresh in my mind, read Friedman on the same topic. This allows me to breeze through Friedman's coverage of "how" to use a setting, and concentrate on his insights into "why" and "when" to use it. I find this reading method very helpful.A couple of final notes:First, if your camera has firmware version 2 (you should update it if not), the sections on Face Detection and Eye AF in both books are obsolete. Friedman has written a good short supplement on the changes in version 2, which is available as a PDF file (at least it is if you buy the book from his website).Second, to be sure I got both the Kindle and PDF versions, as well as the new firmware supplement, I purchased directly from Friedman Archives. On the positive side, this meant I was able to download both the .AZW3 (Kindle) and .PDF files right away (at twice the cost on Amazon, mind you). However, be aware that you have to manually load the .AZW3 file to your Kindle. Because of the large file size, you cannot upload the file to Amazon, and then download or sync it to other devices. The PDF version does have better formatting, and is a much smaller file size than the .AZW3 version. In retrospect, I would have purchased the Kindle version from Amazon, as long as I was confident I would receive the promised PDF file on request.

This book is a very well written, easy to follow description of every function of the camera. Illustrations and photos of camera menus are excellent. Since I've had a lot of experience with cameras in the past, didn't need to read the book from page one to the end. I simply look up a subject in the index and read the applicable pages. Setup menu starts on page 179 and goes to 198. Alexander White describes your options and gives is own setup for his menus. Bracketing, autofocus features, etc, and some features that Sony has put into this camera like "clear image zoom" I'm learning about for the first time.About the camera. I sold my Nikon D500 with Nikkor 200-500mm lens which is considered one of the very best combos for wildlife and bird photography and bought this Sony RX10 iv instead. I'm now getting way better bird images because this camera is so much easier to hand hold in my pedaling kayak and the autofocus is second to none (same as Sony's top of the line pro camera). The ability of this camera to capture the bird's eye is just spectacular. My images are tack sharp, even with cropping. The AI on the RX10 recognizes the subject of your image and stays locked on so well. I don't use auto on this camera, but if you are a beginner, White, goes over the different automatic programing features and the ability of the camera to recognize the type of image you are photographing, where it adapts the settings to what you are shooting. Amazing stuff.I kept my Nikon D5500 for landscapes and night sky photography along with some lenses which I use for that. But for wildlife, sports, and closeup, the Sony rx10 iv is the best camera I've ever had when it comes to results.

This book nicely distills into manageable "bites" the large number of features of the RX10 iv. The book's organization is helpful and logical, and organized topic by topic. Fortunately, the author will mention a specific feature in several different topic sections when it's appropriate to do so, meaning that you get a "full meal" discussion within each topic section so you don't have go paging around to find information that appears in only one place in the book. The features of the camera are so numerous that any scheme of organization would be challenging and, I suspect, inevitably applauded by some but criticized by others. That said, to me, this is a very helpful and very nicely written guide.

When I begin to learn a new camera I always download the manufacturer's manual and read it "cover to cover", but I find White's books are also very helpful, so I usually buy a paperback of the appropriate "...Guide to..." book and read that too. There's always a lot of very basic information which I don't need, but there are also hints and tips which make using the camera easier. I find that for these "Guide to" books, the paperback version is well worth the extra money, because the downloaded version of the book doesn't show the diagrams and photo images consistently or clearly. I highly recommend this book, even for very experienced photographers. It will save you a lot of time, and allow you to use the camera much more easily and flexibly.