Customer Reviews

The Lighting Cookbook: Foolproof Recipes for Perfect Glamour, Portrait, Still Life and Corporate Photographs (Photography for All Levels: Advanced)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am an intermediate amateur photographer and have a different perspective than the "beginner" from Alaska who wrote a review below. About the book "cover[ing] too much material in too little detail," I disagree. All of the photographs have either a detailed verbal description of how the lighting was set up, or a verbal description and a diagram. About the book requiring a "lot of gear and equipment," the back cover says that the author "begin[s] with an inventory of ingredients found in a well-stocked commercial studio," which is fair warning for the buyer. With some imagination, as another reviewer wrote below, an amateur photographer can make do with not-too-expensive equipment (e.g., for the first "recipe" on pages 24-26 the reflector can be a shiny collapsible auto windshield sun reflector that costs $5 at Wal-Mart). I liked Bidner's describing the different styles and lighting techniques used by six professional photographers (Bean, Branman, Farkas, Lane, Thien, Wegner). I don't think I'll ever spend as much money or time (e.g., 10-11 hours photographing a small crystal sailboat, pages 117-119) on photos as the six photographers, but nevertheless this book gave me some great ideas.

I bought this book while searching for a book that would help me get started in portraiture. Although this book covers portraiture, it is probably not quite what I was looking for, but is good in its own right.

The book begins with the first section, "The Well-Stocked Studio," and describes cameras, lighting, and accessories. This is valuable information for a serious photographer wanting to get more advanced, but is overwhelmed at all of the equipment and what it does. Other sections are "Basic Portraiture," "Corporate and Industrial Shots," "Product Shots and Still Lifes," and "Specialized Techniques." Each section presents about a dozen different examples of techniques in that area, detailing the equipment used. Each technique example is covered in a few pages with excellent photographs, a pretty good diagram of the lighting arragement, and an "ingredients" list. The book is also sprinkled with valuable side notes.

To duplicate every example in the book, the reader will need an extraordinarily extensive studio. However, the book starts with simple techniques involving one or two lights and reflectors, and builds upon that. Even the more extensive lighting techniques are helpful in developing your skill at visualizing how a scene should look and how you would choose lighting to achieve that look. Moreover, the less advanced photographer could duplicate the techniques with a couple of battery-powered flashes, a couple of slaves, and using an umbrella, walls, or poster board as reflectors.

I tend to judge the value of a book by how quickly I read it versus its cost. Unlike "The Photographer's Guide to Using Light," which I read in a couple of hours and cost about as much, I found this book to have excellent value as far as the amount of information for the money. You could probably not sit down in a day and go through this whole book. In fact, I read a little at a time over a few months.

As for portraiture, I'm still looking for a book that specializes in portraiture technique. Even though this book does have a section on it, it lacks information on actually posing the subjects.

If you are interested in doing mainly portrait photography, but need to learn more about how to properly and effectively do lighting setups, this book is an excellent place to start. The book has several diagrams of exactly how the lights were setup, along with actual photographs that were taken using each setup.

It talks briefly about how to deal with different types of people, and includes a short part on photographing pets as well. There are also sections on lighting still life photography, although this is not the main focus of the book. If people portraits are what you are interested in doing, this book will be an excellent reference. However if you are more interested in photographing still lifes or pets, I'd recommend that you either find another book, or use this in addition to another resource.

You can quickly broaden your scope on photography with this book. Yes, it is a book based on HAVING the equipment, but with a little bit of creativity, you can arrange yourself improvised equipment for doing most of the things on the book. It is not a "technocracy" book. I is *mostly* a book for showing you how do the PROS achieve a PRO look on their pictures. Buy this book if you have plenty of notion in photography, since it is not meant for beginners. Great "secrets" on the book!!!

Ok, I'm sorry, but I gotta tell you this book is way out of date and doesn't have very many low-budget ideas. I made myself read this book cover to cover because I really needed to learn some lighting techniques fast. Well, when I was finished, I was impressed with the author and her friend's work, but I didn't know much more than I did before picking up the book.

It's almost as if the author has put together a personal portfolio accompanied with some bragging and some stories. The thing that bothers me is that the title "The Lighting Cookbook" seems to suggest that it's like a reference guide for the average Joe that's easy to use, like a real cookbook. Not so. I don't know how many times I've flipped through this book looking for a "recipe" to use for my lighting needs and I always end up putting it back on the shelf.

The "recipes" are too specific and based on things that most people will never do. When's the next time you plan on shooting some pictures of beakers filled with green liquid on top of a piece of plexiglass? Never you say? Ah, too bad because it's covered in this book.

The reason I said this book is out of date is because most people (that aren't stuck in the past) are moving on to digital. We're not using these insanely expensive "view cameras" that only big companies can afford. I've got a top of the line prosumer digital camera and there's not much in this book that even applies to shooting pictures with a regular camera.

The cameras that they use are not the only rediculously expensive items. The lighting equiptment that they use in all the indoor recipes are equally out of the question for most people. It would cost thousands and thousands of dollars to buy the "ingredients" to these recipes. A photographer like the author probably doesn't have any problem affording this equiptment because she's a pro, but what about your middle class audience?

I'd like to say that I really hate to be negative about anything. I like to give everything I'm reading the benifit of the doubt. That's why I read this whole book. When I finished, I placed it on my shelf and it pisses me off every time I look at it. Today, when I typed in "lighting" and it came up as one of the three most popular, I had to say something because I know that regular people like me are buying this book because they think it has the answers to their questions. Well, my friend it doesn't and I just thought I'd warn you.

As I finish this review I find myself asking a certain question. Who is this book for? It's not for regular people or beginners, because they don't need to take glamour shots of jewelry. So, I started to think that maybe it was for people that own a photography business and own all of this expensive equiptment, but wouldn't a professional photographer who owns their own business already know how to use their own equiptment? I don't know. Maybe it's for rich people that own a hundred thousand dollars worth of equiptment, but don't know how to use any of it and have no creativity.

Since reading this book, I've gone on to learn way more by flipping through catelogs and websites.

Let me say that I do give this book two stars instead of one because it features some great inspirational photography and is probably useful to some small group of people out there.

I know people that swear by this book, as the be all, do all of studio lighting.

Personally, I think that it's very good, but not as good as the Ketchum and Dantzig books. Still worth a spot of your photographic bookshelf.

What I like about the book:

1. The use of 'recipes' for a given shoot... a neat concept, well executed. This book clearly aims at replication, and succeeds.

2. Great lighting setup diagrams. Not enough, but excellent ones when they appear.

3. Only about 20 pages of filler at the start of the book (in the form of a definition of terms). The rest of the book is valuable.

4. Stays on topic (THANK YOU)... covers lighting recipes for Glamour, Portrait, Still Life and Corporate photos.

Not much to dislike about this book, but here's a few:

1. Over-hyped. You'll meet people who can't understand how you can be a photographer without this book. It's good, but not that good.

2. Too few diagrams. Is this hard people? One lighting diagram for each image. Work with me here.

3. Readability. Bidner doesn't read in a snoozer fashion, but you won't read this one for fun, either.

All in all, you'll want this book. Just not as the first book you buy on the subject of lighting.

Though there are clearly things in here that will be useful to any photographer I found that, in general, it covered too much material in too little detail. I think you need to be an experienced studio photographer with a lot of gear and equipment already to make much use of this book. I think beginners, like myself, who want to establish a solid foundation will not find it as helpful. That is the situation I am in and wish I'd gotten "The Portrait" from the Lighting series.

The book delivers: detailed info on lighting (and styling,propping) setups. The diagrams were frustrating because they lack important details. Although they show, e.g., the height of lights, they are vague about whether measuring to the center of the light, and whether a rectangular light is oriented vertically, horizontally, and whether it is tilted. A more important drawback is that the diagrams don't show the measurements from light(s) to model, a vitally-important factor.

The photos are nice, and professional quality. Most of the models and photos are attractive. Too large a propertion of the face shots have bizarre makeup, though.

Suggestions: Provide careful and COMPLETE measurement info in diagrams; stick to people, drop the products/still life; cut down on the extreme makeup.

All told, well worth having. If not for the astonishing lack of detailed measurement info, it would have got 5 stars.

Maybe I bought the book with the wrong impression. I was wanting more in-depth knowledge and new lighting set-ups. This book gave good examples of standard lighting sets. I think this book is best for someone who has minimal knowledge of lighting. It will walk you through the basics of lighting. There was alot of emphasis placed on "easy" lighting, with bare bulbs. I didn't feel that there were enough different lighting set-ups with actual studio lights for portraits. I would recommend this book to someone who is trying to learn how to use light.

I'm an advanced amateur, and shoot mostly friends and family. The practical tips, in the book, really do make a big differnce in the quality of the photographs. Such as fill light, shooting angles for people, and film types.
Now my friends are bugging me to shoot all their portraits, i feel like a pro. Thanks