Customer Reviews

Photographic Lighting Simplified

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

 

 

Photographic Lighting Simplified is a great book for the beginner like myself. It explains in novice language the details concerning all aspects of photographic lighting. When to use and not to use various lights depending on the situation. The book covers hotlights, flash, strobe lights and accessories. Also covered are exposer-reflective meters to manually set your camera and correct use of the Kodak gray scale for proper exposer. I read the entire 163 pages in about 3 days. The book also has 9 self-assignment for you to try out on you own. All pictures in the book include camera settings and shot detail that make it easy for you to reproduce a similar shot. All photos are in black & white except for the cover page. At first I found this distracting but then realized that black & white photos show the best contrast and light on the subjects in the photographs. I bought the book to improve my knowledge and skills to do lighting for desktop studio photos for Ebay.

Another book that I have heard about but haven't been able to track down yet is Digital Desktop Studio Photography by Rick Ashley & Dennis Curtin. Amazon does not carry this book yet.

I regret to have found this book very disappointing. Susan McCartney's book on travel photography, Travel Photography: A Complete Guide to How to Shoot and Sell, is the very best book on the subject. I've read it twice, some sections even more than twice. I purchased Photographic Lighting Simplified with the same level of quality content in mind. Unfortunately, the book is more "simplified" than what I had hoped for.

The book is very fast and easy to read, but the content is useful only to those with no experience whatsoever in photographic lighting. Susan McCartney has broad experience in lighting, and I was disappointed to find the depth of that experience is not presented in this book. For example, she talks more about traveling with strobes and using flashes for on-location travel photography shoots in her travel photography book than in this one. I would like to have seen more of that experience and knowledge related here.

A book on photographic lighting really needs to be in color with stunningly inspirational photographs. Many of the black and white pictures in this book are really dismal and even technically flawed in some cases. Ms. McCartney is a first-rate photographer and I'm sure the originals are perfect, but the black and white reproductions in this book fall short.

However, those critiques aside, if you have not studied lighting before then this book will provide a good overview for you and introduce you to some new techniques. Those with travel photography in mind should check out Susan McCartney's other book mentioned above. For some really creative lighting techniques try Gary Gladstone's book Corporate & Location Photography.

I fell in love with Susan McCartney's photography books when I Mastering the Basics of Photography. This book is just as good at breaking down the elements of light into language and steps even a novice (like me) can understand. I was always frustrated trying to photograph shiny surfaces and trying to capture dramatic shadows. This book has such great tips for dealing with these situations that I actually look for challenging shots now, just to show off what I have learned about lighting.

I have three main criticisms of this book. First, the book has no color pictures when it is clear the author did not take many of these pictures in B&W (or if she did she needs to find another profession). This is ridiculous when the subject of the book is photography and the pictures are an important learning tool. Second, the author spends too much time on hotlights and flashes when most photographers (even amateurs) will be using strobes because of the availability of light modifiers and other advantages.Third, the last half of the book is about doing photographic assignments rather than adding more information (and there is a lot more) about lighting. In sum, I would skip this book if you're light on cash and get "Master lighting guide for potrait photographers" and "Beginner's lighting guide to photographic lighting" which are both excellent (avoid "basic studio lighting").

Gives you an overall learning experience from very basic lights and up to the newest technologies, including digital photo, with multiple lights.
In addition it provides some personal assigments so that you can practice what you read.
It is a good investment

I learned a great deal from this book. It's well-written, and the explanations are in plain language and easy to understand, yet not dumbed-down. It gives the how-to's without requiring expensive equipment and explains how to do things with simple equipment so beginners really can learn how to use photographic lighting professionally.

Do not buy this book. She simply states her opinion about random name brands and what she thinks you should buy without explaining any of the reason why.

I thought this book would be an all-in-one lighting wonder book. I mean, it covers hotlights, flashes, strobes, shooting on location, shooting in a studio, and more! But I was sorely disappointed.

While it does discuss a lot of different equipment and techniques, it isn't really very helpful. Why?

* Structure: It doesn't follow a logical sequence, which means you can be jumping around a lot to find 'related' information. This, in turn, means you haven't learnt much because it's too hard to 'file' what you're reading mentally.

* Equipment vs. technique: These two things are mixed in together when they really ought to be separate. I mean, the lighting setups you use when using hotlights are roughly the same as when using strobes. The way you handle the equipment is different, but the same principles apply. So why go into the details of setting up a portrait when discussing the different equipment types?

* No diagrams: How hard can it be to draw a lighting diagram for each shot? There is not one diagram for any photo in the book (though Susan McCartney does start by saying how important diagrams are!!), which makes it hard to visualise the setups.

* No colour: Probably to save money, the only colour photograph in the book is on the cover. Fair enough, but a little effort could have been put into making the black and whites a little less 'flat'.

* Digital falsehoods: Though McCartney apparently shoots digital occasionally, she really doesn't get it, and this comes up in some obviously wrong statements throughout the book, like this one:
"Do be aware that each time you play back a digital image in the camera, it may degrade the final result..." Since when have digital images degraded when previewed on the camera? Statements like this really don't help her professional credibility.

To summarise, while the book does cover a lot of ground and contains some useful information for beginners, you will need to read something more thorough before you actually start shooting with serious lighting gear. It doesn't even tell you how to control lighting ratios!

Terrible format and poor editing. It looks like the author made some Xerox copies along withsome notes scribbled with a Sharpie marker. The entire book is in black and white. Photos look like they were taken with a disposable camera not a pro photographer's SLR. Very disappointed with this book. Not much usable information. Do not recommend this book.

This book has some simple lighting set ups to help the beginner but the reason I only gave it 3 stars is I found the book boring to look at. Most of the book is in black and white photos. I like a writer that gets to the point pretty quick and simple and found some of the reading monotone kind of like the black and white pictures.