dEaringfilm reviews the
Ron Reznick SureShot System for Digital Photography
(5 DVD set of Photography instruction)
http://www.sureshotsystem.com/
AKA: 9 hours of fun and learning from photography's version of Bill Nye the Science Guy
My eyes were swollen red and I was itching and rubbing my nose as I do so often. I happen to be allergic to certain types of cats, but hell I love cats. No one was going to pull me away from what I was hearing in this room in Burbank, California in early January 2004. I am some dude off the street and he is a world famous photographer giving me his time for free. He took the time to explain and talk about every topic that I had questions about. I had just ventured to his resedence to pick up the first edition of his eBook since I live so close, and gas was a lot cheaper at that time. Ron Reznick is the type of guy that loves to teach and has a immerse world of knowledge. There are very few subjects that he could not converse to the very minute detail. In essence this is what you get when you buy the SureShot System of DVD's. You get a world famous photographer pouring his heart and brain out for hours and hours with the fundamentals of taking good photos all of the time.
Who is he?
Ron Reznick: Photography Coach?
Ron Reznick: Walking Wikipedia?
Well, if you have no idea who Ron is, check out his website with top grade photos, the funny thing is I have seen some of his personal collection and he does not show his best stuff on his website. He is one of the first digital photographers. In the olden days, photographers did not share their trade secrets and were not too kind with the sharing of their photographs. Welcome the digital age, that model does not work anymore and the guys that successfully transitioned from film to Digital like Moose Peterson had to learn to share info. It helped that guys like Moose were already authors used to sharing information. Well, Ron Reznick did not take up photography until the digital age with the early Nikon 900 series Coolpix cameras. He answered just about every question on Internet forums and taught thousands of people how to use their equipment through posting.
Ron Reznick speaks intelligently about every style of photography. He lays a base for any type of photographic style that you pick up. This gives you a base to add your own artistic expression to your works. His fundamentals are shown on the main DVD's are not the end all for the way you should shoot. He opens the photographers eyes and engages their brains to elements and concepts that can help them be better.
If you have had a Ron Reznick training session, this is like a training session time machine, you can go back to the parts that you were confused by and review them over and over again. Ron is going to fill your skull pretty fast; it even took him years to learn and then master these techniques.
There are basically 3 DVDs for the advanced photographer, plus a Concept DVD and Digital Darkroom DVD explaining things like monitor calibration and external hard drive choices. Being a total computer nut I loved the Digital Darkroom DVD and wish there would have been a DVD going over the lenses Ron chooses and why he chooses them, but hey what more can you ask for $70 until the end of July then it will sell for a over a hundred, even then its a complete and total steal every bit of a value as Nikon's own 50mm 1.8 lens.
Very few people can understand every topic and concept Ron is talking about the first time and if you are one of the few, Harvard is looking for a few good men and women :) The DVD set is like a great lens; very few fully understand it the first use/view but you can grow into it and master it after repeated views. It perfectly compliments shooting with Ron because he constantly babbles out numbers much like a good coach.
I was disappointed to see that the DVD set was not widescreen. I would like to be able to take full advantage of our wide format LCD and Plasma TV's. I watched the DVD set on my wide screen computer LCD, and I would have loved for it to fill the screen, heck I would have loved to see them push the ticket and offer a HD version for extra cost. Perhaps in the quicklime format that supports HD. But alas the type of person I am is less than 1/1000th of one percent of potential owners.
Ron shows you how to think and use the color temperature and channels; for most people, this is not natural at all. Luckily you can download the Greyscale reference and RGB tools on his website and study it while he talks about it. I never think about this when I photograph but from now on I will, any advantage that I can get I will take especially since this is such a basic and needed skill in digital photography.
There are certainly many ways of presenting information and the DVD set does a pretty good job of presenting the information in an attractive way. It has basically 2 scene styles. Either Ron is on location talking about why he is shooting a scene the way he does and walking a student through, or sitting at his desk with a student talking about certain images and ways to look and process them.
Although he talks for the entire time you never seem to get tired of his voice or learning what type of things go though his mind when he is taking a photograph. I am sure that most of us have about half as many things going through our mind, but he expands your ability to think of what you are doing while taking a photograph.
Ron does a lot of explaining of photographic styles and compositional rules, during this time he uses his mouse to point out elements, it would have been nice if there would have been some sort of on screen display pointing out, this would have seemed more professional and finished. I know they had this ability because they used it to point out some stuff when they were in the field on the camera histograms.
He talks about watching and studying your subjects and watching for patterns and anticipating something new. I do this same thing with model photography, Ron really makes you think about total ownership of a scene.
I much like anyone could use some polishing up on the un-fundamentals as I call them, so a DVD system like this is highly recommended by me. There is simply no other system that can even compete with this. I know from the man himself that quite a few other projects are planned for the future. Among future projects are advanced instructonal DVD's, setting up lighting and advanced gear videos. As soon as he does you can expect some sort of review from me, be it good or bad.
