Customer Reviews

Lighting for Film and Digital Cinematography (with InfoTrac)

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

 

 

I have had this wonderful book since its first imprint. It demystifies the art of cinematography and lays a good foundation for the reader to understand both the craft and practice of cinematography. Those who have struggled to read American Cinematographer will have no problems after reading this excellent book. Highly recommended. But why the price increase? I paid only $30 in 1992.

This book absolutely helps the beginning cinematographer in every sense of the word. It is not only helpful for the amateur cinematographer but its also a useful and resourceful book at any stage of your profession. There are diagrams that help you duplicate lighting situations explained in the book. This book truly attempts to teach you.

I bought this book because, as someone who has shot a limited amount of both film and video, I wanted to learn more specifics about lighting, exposure theory, color theory, and so on. While the book covers all of these topics, it does so in a limited, rather basic way, and for the information you get, it is not worth the price. It is a flimsy paperback book with lots of empty white space on every page and the illustrative photos are mostly black and white, which is fine for black and white cinematography but . . . .

I returned my copy and purchased "Motion Picture and Video Lighting" by Blain Brown for 1/3 the price of "Lighting for Film and Digital Cinematography." Not only is Brown's book less expensive, but it is PACKED with highly useful, very practical information. Plus, it includes a DVD with lighting demonstrations, technical tests, and short scenes illustrating the lighting principles covered in the book. Also, I really like the section of Brown's book that lists all the major types of lights used on professional shoots (from Fresnels and HMIs to PARs, Dino's, MaxiBrutes, FAYs, Soft Lights, Space Lights, fluorescents, and so on). Yes, Brown's book is a bit more technical, but he covers the basics very well and his book is, in my opinion, a far better investment, and a less expensive one at that.

This book is a definitely must have for anyone interested in cinematography. This book goes thru all the different aspects and things that a cinematographer must know to create beautiful images. It does go into detail about video as well. But the thing is, and it does state this in the book, if you use film techniques for video, you'll come out with much better images than those that you see on those bland tv sitcoms and such. If you know the film techniques you can't do anything but improve the quality of your video. And the lighting exercises in the back are good ways to practice what the books teaches...all books on lighting should come with exercises. The only true way to learn lighting is to engage in it. This is a great book but the price is a bit outlandish.

This book dishes out a lot of information in the small space between it's paperback covers. I read it looking for film lighting basics, and had a tough time grasping some of the more technical language involving exposure, T-stops, etc, even though I have a decent background in photography. The book does a poor job of addressing and explaining these key concepts. I gleaned a decent amount of information from the pictures and diagrams, but they were poorly aligned with the text, requiring lots of flipping back and forth. All in all, I would reccommend this book only to people with a fair amount of knowledge of the physics behind photography and/or film.

I'm very new to lighting for any film stock. My goal is to become more aware of how to light for film, mainly digitial stock. This books does provide extremely detailed information on lighting, such as footcandles, gamma, lighting terms and much more, but mainly in one chapter. It did provide detail about digital film lighting and standard photography lighting. I wish it gave more insight about "moods" but I learned a great deal. Downside, it's expensive for the material you get.

Anyone interested in Ciinematography sholud have this book. It is full of practical examples, and the apendix is a very useful reference. Lots of information you will not find elsewhere