Originally posted by Ron Boggs Unfortunately, you already looked at one of the mags that's considered "how-to". Shutterbug tends to have a theme for each issue and perhaps the theme of the issue you saw just didn't offer enough how-to that fits your style?
I find that even though they have a theme that might interest me, and the articles appear from the titles to be interesting, they seldom go into enough depth to be useful. Occasionally a promising-looking article turns out to be just a thinly-disguised ad for the author's book on the subject, which is quite annoying, but mostly it's just a matter of trying to be too general when dealing with are often complex topics. You *can't* explain color management in a six-page magazine article.
I think there is an issue in general with the idea of a "how-to" magazine. By definition, these magazines tend to cater to relative beginners, since they are the ones most likely to be looking for how-to info. But beginners don't stay beginners forever, and soon they outgrow the magazine. So including a lot of beginner-oriented content is not conducive to keeping subscribers long term.
A magazine like Shutterbug is *trying* to appeal to professionals, and while pros certainly can benefit from certain types of how-to articles, they aren't going to be on "beginner" topics like "what settings should I use to shoot such-and-such a subject". The topics that interest pros will be more complex, and thus harder to cover in a short magazine article.
So Shutterbug tries to cover topics of interest to pros, but really cannot do most of the technical subjects justice. Especially embarassing, I think, are there reivews, which usually come in long after dpreview and all the other web sites have already posted *much* more in-depth articles.
But I don't think it fair to say Shutterbug is particularly guilty of being in bed with any particular manufacturer. In fact, I'd say they are remarkable in how *not* dominated they are by Nikon or Canon. Leica, maybe. There is definitely a bit of a film bias - and rangefinder or medium format in particular - to the content. Not in the sense that it *dominates* the coverage, but it's probably way out of proportion to the market in general, if not *their* intended audience.
I subscribed a couple of years ago laregly on the strength of Monte Zucker's column, which usually deal with portraits and travel. These are topics I wouldn't have placed high on my list of things to want to read about, but he had a way of writing about these topics that could get me excited to try the things he talked about. Since his passing last year, I find there is less to get excited about in Shutterbug.