Which magazine for keen amateur?

[RaeB]

Could you recommend a monthly magazine for a keen, amateur newbie? I thought it might be a useful birthday gift to buy a subscription, as a magazine dropping through the door monthly will keep the encouragement up over winter!

She is using a DSLR and is toying with the idea of buying additional lenses currently and has just started dabbling with software. She's been concentrating on the technicalities of taking the photo and her composition so far.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Rachel

[markmullen]

Amateur Photographer is a good read, plenty of news in addition to tutorials etc.

If she is more into the artistic side of things the British Journal of Photography is good if a little dry.

How about a subscription to the Royal Photographic Society? She will get the magazine and also gets access to workshops and can work towards a distinction.

[covboy]

Do you know what camera she is using?

There are a couple of make specific publications on the market (Canon or Nikon)

[RaeB]

She has a Nikon.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

[mizx]

Practical Photographer, Photography Monthly and Digital Photographer are among the most favoured as far as I know.

I'm not particularly interested in fine-art photography and Photography Monthly seemed to feature more of that, I subscribed to Practical Photographer personally; I'd recomend it, it's full of tips, so it suits me as I'd like to think I know what I'm doing technically but gives me ideas I hadn't thought of.

Edited by mizx on Thursday 18th October 13:11

[Ev_]

Digital SLR Photographer seems to be pitched quite nicely, explaining techniques clearly without being condescending.

[Kermit power]

Personally, I found they were all OK to get started, but new product reviews aside, there's really only so much content that photography can provide for a magazine, especially when they have to win new customers rather than having the luxury of just progressing existing customers to ever greater levels of expertise.

As a result, topics such as "why you should shoot RAW", "how to get better portraits/landscapes/still life/action shots", "rules of composition" and so on simply get recycled every 12 months or so. Useful for a complete novice, but ultimately frustrating, so if the cost is acceptable, I'd incline towards the Royal Photographic Society approach as well.

[Crafty_]

I like "outdoor photography", there always seems to be a decent bit of content. They seem to of revised it recently, haven't had a good read but its much less "samey" than the other mags with regards to repeating features/articles.

[cirks]

Kermit power said:

so on simply get recycled every 12 months or so.

That's why I like AP - some decent info about techniques but actually some interesting articles about particular photographers or photos etc. It's cheap if you get the discounted subscription too. Most of the "digital photo" type mags get very very repetitive after a while and there are more online tutorials etc than these mags will ever cover.

[andy-xr]

The only one I'll read is the BJP, the rest tbh are ste