Customer Reviews

Softbox Lighting Techniques for Professional Photographers

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

 

 

Unlike Steve's previous two books "Lighting Techniques for Fashion and Glamour Photography" and Master Lighting Techniques for Outdoor and Location Portrait Photography", "Softbox Lighting Techniques for Professional Photographers" is light on all the theoretical techie talk ie: Inverse Square Law etc . . . and heavy on the creative use of Softbox Lighting. Almost every page of the 122 page book is illustrated with Stephen's beautiful photography along with diagrams to help illustrate his points. For those of you who are technically impaired like myself this will be a breath of fresh air! If you like the nuts and bolts of lighting, then make sure you pick either of Stephen's previous two books, which go into much greater detail on these topics.

Once you get through a short chapter on the Characteristics of Light, you are headlong into the practical use of Softbox lighting along with chapters on softbox modiefiers and combining hard and soft light sources to give you images some snap. The book does not stop there, it finishes with chapters on using softboxes to light commercial interiors and products as well as a chapter on using the softbox for outdoor lighting. Stephen has left no stone unturned with this latest in his Trilogy of Lighting books.

The only real complaint I have for this book are the Lighting Diagrams, for my personal taste I prefer diagrams illustrated from the Camera's perspective and not the models, which avoids me having to constantly flip the image in my head. A minor nitpick at best.

Even acclaimed commercial photographer Will Crockett was noted as saying "Professionals and non-pros alike will find something of use in Steve's new book and we think the info on "Combining Light Sources" in Chapter 4, is some of the best we've seen on this topic." I totally Agree!

Bottom line, if you are a seasoned portrait shooter looking to spice up your typical softbox images or a beginner looking into adding the softbox to your arsenal of lighting tools, we highly recommend this book!

Cris Mitchell

Publisher

ProPhotoResource[dot]com

This book is both informative and frustrating. It awkwardly tries to to be both breezy and technical at the same time and as a result often fails to properly explain technical details properly. This results in nebulous expressions such as "pop" being used to describe when a scene is properly lit. While there are many excellent photos showing the effect of varying the setup, sometimes the sets are incomplete or the captions confusing. Also there are lots of lighting layout diagrams that would be a very good thing if it wasn't for the fact that they mix top-view and side-view symbols in the same diagram making them almost incomprehensible - arrrgh! I hope there will be a revised second edition that fixes the problems because it could be a really great textbook for the advanced photographer - but it isn't that yet.

My background is in engineering photography (high-speed events), but I want to learn more about studio photography for marketing and demonstration. I purchased this at the same time I purchased the Creative Lighting Techniques for Studio Photographers and Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting. Of the three, I got much less out of Softbox Lighting Techniques than either of the other two. Maybe it's just me, but this just looked like a random collection of different studio lighting setups. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, no explanation, no general drift, just a grab-bag of different light arrangements.

On the plus side, the photographer did something I always thought should be done, but have never actually seen in the wild: he used a Gretag-Macbeth chart in some of the photos as a reference for doing color balance.

The best picture is the one on the cover.

Inside you wont find stuff like this.

Its a guiding book how to create very boring pictures, pictures with a certain kind of nothing.

I'm not a friend of dramatic expression, because you get fatigued very quick, but you can also make pictures with are free of shadows, structure, tension.

The kind you look at and forget in a second.

Recommanded instead:

Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally

Light, Science and Magic

I'm just in the process of setting up a studio space, and I found this a helpful resource as I was buying and testing out my equipment. With this book--and the help of some patient subjects!--I think I'm well on my way.

I like Stephen Dantzigs books, they are not long but they do contain lots of helpful information on getting lighting right. His books give you something to work on to get pro results. Worth the money.

See my review on "Master Lighting Techniques . . ." by the same author. It pretty much applies here. This book is average. Having purchased so many books over the years, I am looking for "above average". This does not neet that criteria.

Stephen A. Dantzig's SOFTBOX LIGHTING TECHNIQUES FOR PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS tells how to use the softbox tool to produce superior photography lighting results, from understanding how softboxes work to their different sizes, shapes, and range of possibilities. Techniques range from producing glamour shots and interior images to using color temperatures effectively and modifying lighting with scrims and masks.