Customer Reviews

Learning to Light: Easy and Affordable Techniques for the Photographer

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book helped to improve my understanding of lighting and is particularly useful to those on a restricted budget. It covers a wide range of styles and subjects both clearly and concisely. The writing manages to avoid the dryness and sterility I've so often encountered elsewhere, and I can personally vouch for the fact that suprisingly good results can be obtained by working with the simple diagrams and recommendations. There are also many handy hints, from buying gear to setting up a studio. This book encourages the reader to improvise and experiment whilst informing and educating, and I wish I had discovered it sooner!

I bought the book because I thought the "Easy and Affordable Techniques" would be clever and insightful, which they were not. The author's ultimate advice is to buy the standard lighting equipment, but slowly. While he does explain how/why the standard studio lighting equipment works, so does virtually every lighting book. I prefer the Pro Lighting Series for better photos, better diagrams, and better writing.

I regard myself as a reasonably knowlegable amateur - I know all about how exposure works, and I can use my flash bounced.

But I know pretty much nothing about studio lighting.

This book teaches, and teaches well, all about studio lighting, what equipment to buy and how to use it. The prose is clear, and the examples are more than up to the task of teaching the beginner. I learned alot from this book. I suspect that the people who found it inadequate simply knew more going in than I did. For a complete novice to studio lighting, I'd recommend this book without reservation.

But the book is seriously showing its age. There's far too much discussion of film and it's uses, and the lightmeters that it discusses aready look a little... old. Hence the four star rating. If you can find another book on amazon for the complete beginner that actually handles digital issues instead of film, then consider buying that instead. I didn't, and I'm happy with my purchase.

this book has sections on everything you can imagine-- I won't get into them all here, but I will say it has an excellent, excelent first section on just equipment: what the different types of lights are, how they're used, sample photos that show the unique characteristics of that light, etc. it also goes into scrims, gobos, snoots, light meters, and allllll that other weird stuff you will need to know about as you get better at lightign. tons of sample photos make this a great reference AND learning guide.

I am generally a nature photographer, using natural light for my work. However, I occasionally get asked to do some architectural or portrait shooting. I usually have to turn those opportunities down, because I know next-to-nothing about artificial lighting. I decided I needed to bone up on lighting techniques, and pick up this book the other day.

It is a quick read, and a great introduction to basic lighting equipment and techniques. If you are already familiar with artificial lighting and are looking for advanced information, this is probably not the book for you. The audience for this book is someone like me, who is familiar with photography, but not with lighting.

There is a lot of discussion in here about film types, light meters, and polaroid test shots that are irrelevant if you are shooting digital. Digital photography takes away a lot of the guesswork regarding white balance and exposure, so you can probably breeze over a lot of those parts of the book. But I was really focused on the types of lights, reflectors and other accessories, and their placement. And this book was a great intro to that.

Although geared towards film cameras and processing it's an excellent source for studio lighting. I loved the diagrams and product set ups. This gives me a bunch of great ideas for still life shots and lighting effects. I definitely enjoyed this book!

As an advanced amateur, I find this to be one of the very best books in my collection. It has given me clear answers to more questions that formally puzzled me, and introduced me to more new techniques, than any other book. I own several other standard books on lighting and feel strongly that this title is tops in the category, and can't resist alerting others to it.

The authors discuss all sorts of lighting equipment, but also cover light meters, back-drops, reflective surfaces, and household lighting sources such as desk lamps. A final section covers a wonderful variety of projects from low-key portraits to photographing windows.

The many photographs are perfectly chosen and are subordinated to illustrating the points discussed, rather than being just a show-case for fabulous pictures, as they are in the average photography book. A clear diagram accompanies the description of each lighting approach.

The one negative Amazon.com review mentions the problem of buying equipment "slowly"... as I develop a basic set of lighting equipment, slowly, I will be glad to have this resource to guide me.