Best photography magazine for a beginner?
I'm looking to get into photography as a hobbie and i'm planning on getting the upcoming nikon d3100 is that a good choice.
Legacy Magazine.
American Photographer for me. But try this just pick up one copy of a magazine off the newsstand a week till you find one you like also try taking a beginners course in photography.
For print magazines I like Popular Photography and Shutterbug, but Popular Photography would probably be my choice for someone new to photography. They cover a wide range of subjects and have some good tips, reviews, etc.
There are a lot of good magazines out there so I agree with the other responder that a good way of seeing which you like best is to check a few out yourself and then decide which you want to subscribe to. Normally a bookstore like Borders or Barnes and Noble have a good selection of photography magazines to purchase but don't forget your local library as a possible source as well. You could spend some time there and likely get a good feel for which magazine you like the best.
There are also some great online photography magazines that you can subscribe to for free. One that I just discovered that you might want to check out is PhotographyBB. They publish a photography magazine that you can subscribe to and then download the PDF files for free. They also have some great tips on their photo blog. To check them out go to: http://www.photographybb.com/
On the whole magazines work better once you have some basic photographic knowledge. It's because a magazine often can't pick something up from square one, and expects (even requires) the reader to be able to keep up.
That said many magazines run photography courses. I know that Practical Photographer runs the SLR Skills course first half of each year, and an editing course second half of the year. If you start with the magazine in January you could follow that course.
If you want to get going quicker, then a book on photography is quite a good place to start. I started with "The Digital Photography Book" by Scott Kelby, it's written in an easy to approach way, so you should be able to get going quickly. I found by the end of the book that you probably will have skills that you find his tone a little patronising, so there's definitely no need to get book 2 or 3. Nonetheless this book really eases that learning curve, so I'd still recommend it.
If you want some more serious books, the Professor of Photography and author John Hedgecoe has produced some very good content. It's a lot more dry than someone like Scott Kelby but once you've got going it's more refined.
Check these out:
http://www.photoanswers.co.uk/ - The online home of Practical Photographer magazine
http://www.amazon.co.uk/...405340932/ Hedgecoe's Art of Digital Photography
http://www.amazon.co.uk/...32147404X/ - Digital photography book vol 1 by Scott Kelby
http://www.amazon.co.uk/...817439390/ - this book is one of the highly regarded books, worth considering.
Photo answers, AP, DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHER