So I'll be spending some time here. Any suggestions on a good book on digital photography? Managed to get this shot over the weekend. Critiques welcome...

<img src="http://www.showyourmedia.com/membersonly/getimg.php?image=steeletoast/Fathers day.JPG&" />

I've recommended 2 of his books that are good starters for photography. They aren't specific to digital, but they discuss basic principles that apply to film and digital, so it's a great place to start regardless.

As for the pic, it appears to be underexposed. Could be because it's backlit and the water splashing might have thrown off the in-camera metering. There are ways to deal with that once you understand lighting and the cameras limitations a little better.

Did you do any kind of processing to the image?
Otherwise same comment as RKA

28-135 zoom with IS. The image was edited slightly to compensate for a lot of backlighting. The big girl in your sig is one of my all time favorites.

Not quite the same as the Nikon D40. Might as well learn the terms. That's a good kit to start out with - very capable.

.. recommend this book to anyone gettin into photography

my understanding on how to compensate for this would be to take a reading up close to the subject thereby eliminating the the strong back light affecting the meter. This normally works for me.... I think.

In this shot, approaching the subject may be tricky cause of the enviornment, so typically I would intentionally under expose or over expose until I get the intended effect (trial and error) is there a better way to get an accurate light reading in this instance?

Did I make any sense?

However because of the bright white water spray, it's still going to be off. So I'd just overexpose by 1-2 stops knowing the water droplets might blow out, then fix the rest in post.

Of course, this assumes your goal is to expose for the people. Maybe that isn't the goal, in which case the approach would vary.

You got the hang of it!

Assume 5 stops difference between black and white. Assume that camera wants to expose everything to medium gray (18% gray). Modern cameras expose more to about 12% gray, but close enough.

So, from white to medium gray it's 2.5 stops and 2.5 stops more to black.

If most of your metering area is occupied by white, dial in +2.5 stops to properly expose midtones. If most of it is occupied by black, dial in -2.5 stops for the same result.

These are, of course, very general guidelines, but gives you a good staring point.

This doesn't work very well with evaluative/matrix metering, since camera uses its own algorithms to calculate suggested exposure, but works fine with spot and center-weighted metering.

I bought a D40 about a year ago. The interface and function access seemed overly complicated. Took it back. Spent about a year with a Sony Cybershot and got frustrated with it's limitations. Finally took the plunge with the 40D and am very happy with it thus far.

I have no idea who the people are and they were moving around a lot so I really didn't have time to compose things. I was standing about 75 feet away and just took some braketed shots. This one came out the best.

nyny is just trying to understand what could be done differently or whether he's on the right track.