Customer Reviews

Shutterbug (1-year auto-renewal)

If you see Shutterbug on a news stand you might think it is a typical photo mag for amateurs. The usual heavy emphasis on product reviews and how to articles. In fact the content is very much biased towards professionals. Lots of stuff beyond the interests and capabilities of the average non-pro photographer. e.g. If you want to submit stuff for their challenges they want prints.

However there is a lot of good in it for the rest of us. It is certainly educational.

For my money the best part is in the recommendations of web sites of top class photographers. A real source of inspiration.

In many respects, Shutterbug is the mirror image of Popular Photography & Imaging. The strength of Popular Photography is its quantitative product reviews. Shutterbug does little if any measuring when they review a product. Further, I have never once seen a review in Shutterbug that was anything less than gushing. The writer will go on and on about the strength of the product and never compare it critically to other similar products on the market. I realize that magazines are reluctant to offend potential advertisers but some shred of integrity toward readers would be greatly appreciated.

The relative strength of Shutterbug is reflected in more general articles regarding photographic technique. This is the area that Popular Photography badly stumbles and this magazine definitely manages to perform at a higher level of competence. Unfortunately, these articles are still pretty basic and repetitive. Any decent entry level book on photography would contain 99% of the advice you'll ever find in Shutterbug. So while the articles are better than the reviews, it's hard to say that they alone make it worth the price of a subscription. In the final analysis, I can't recommend Shutterbug to eithe beginners or advanced photographers.

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this review, I flipped through an issue of Shutterbug at a local store. It looks like there has been a change in editorial policy as a product review took the tone of a true critique rather than being a puff piece as they so often did in the past. There still wasn't quite as much meat as I would have liked but this is definitely a step in the right direction for the magazine. Amazon does not allow reviewers to alter the number of starts given once a review is published or I would probably bump Shutterbug up a notch to 3 stars. It still is far from great, but I appreciate the fact that they've improved a bit.

I recieved my first issue of Shutterbug after about 7 weeks from ordering it. I was disappointed in the mag. as almost all of it is ads, ads and more ads. As far as I'm concerned it should be given away for all the advertising they recieve in it. The articles they had in this issue were about very high end equipment that 99% of the readers would not be able to afford or use. Most of the ads do not even contain prices for the products, making them useless for shopping and comparing anyway. I did like the low price that amazon had for Shutterbug though, I would have really been mad if I had paid cover prices for it.

I had high hopes for this magazine for the serious but not necessarily professional photographer. My love of photography is equaled by my love of good writing, and that's where this magazine dashed my hopes. The writing is generally stiff and cold, but more so, there is poor writing by several different authors. There are other basic mistakes like unmarked diagrams that make it difficult to decipher the point the caption tries to make, etc. The overall impression I have is sloppiness in the writing and editing that make this magazine a poor choice for me.

This is a very basic photography magazine that is best read quickly in the store and put back into the rack.

The camera and lens reviews on the internet are superior and the magazine is bogged down with a ton of advertisements.

Conclusion: save your money.

I have always subscribed to Popular Photography (still do) and enjoy the reading. Recently I wanted to try something different in addition to PopPhoto so I decided on Shutterbug. Like most magazines it has a lot more advertisements than I care to see but at the same time I really don't get bored reading it. It has a lot of stuff about the latest and greatest gear which is fine but I would like to see some of that scaled back and maybe have a few more technical technique and how-to articles. In all it is a decent reading magazine but if your looking for a lot of how-to stuff then this might not be the magazine for you.

Unless you want to spend some heavy dough on photography magazines, this is the best of the crop for us with ordinary wallets. While there are always improvements possible for publications, this one is the most in-depth of American rags. The articles are detailed enough to give you virtually all of the information you need from the author, while not being so technically detailed you can use it to fall asleep at night. I've read this magazine for years, along with about three others, but really look forward to getting this one in the mail.

Shutterbug is one of my favorite magazines .. that may be obvious. If you take photos on a regular basis it could become one of your favorites as well. There is quite a bit of information in it month to month most of which makes sense to me and I like reading about new equipment etc.

This is one of the finest photography magazines around. It has the most detailed product reviews and discusses editing and shooting techniques in just as much detail as well. They really have talented writers at Shutterbug. There is also a great monthly photo contest in the beginning of each issue. I would highly recommend this magazine to anyone who is interested in photography.

I just received my first issue of Shutterbug. Despite the many pages of advertising (some of which is actually informative), I find that the magazine is full of helpful tips, supplemented by products that are relevant to the advice. I look forward to the other issues and if the quality of the magazine endures, so will my subscription to it.