Product Description
The first book in the series, Lighting, is essentially about how you see. Artists paint with oils or watercolors, photographers paint with light. It is the fundamental ingredient of every photo. How a shot is lit can greatly change the feeling it gives the viewer. Whether bright and happy or dark and moody, light is a very useful tool, but it is not always possible to control (unless you can afford a studio) and so this book aims to teach readers how to make the bes… More >>
#1 by Happy With Amazon on March 28, 2010 - 2:20 am
The book is an excellent source book on how to understand the mechanics of light. The writer considers the point of view of someone who has little knowledge in the subject. Yet, the book is a good reference for the those who are more informed in the subject matter. As a former teacher, I highly recommend this easy to understand book by David Parkel.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Remaining Anonymous ahaha on March 28, 2010 - 4:38 am
David Prakel is excellent at explaining the more theoretical side of photography, something that appealed to me, since every book nowadays simply goes into which button to press and the bells and whistles of you camera, and not actually photography.
This book won’t help you understand your camera better; it’ll help you become a better photographer.
I personally recommend getting Basics Photography: Composition first and seeing if that is your thing, since that’s much more applicable to everyone than complex dramatic lighting. If you like this kind of stuff already, get them both.
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by Vaughn D. Martin on March 28, 2010 - 6:48 am
Lighting by David Prakel is simply the best of the approximately 20 books I have on this subject. I do a lot of table top shooting in the form of product shots that I use for magazine articles I write and this includes a lot of PC boards that I design. I was never pleased with the lighting as I am a perfectionist, but with this book it solved many unresolved problems.
As an example, many books cover filters but this book does so in an absolute minimum number of words allowing superb illustrations and photos to clearly demonstrate these otherwise abstract even obtuse principles. The drawings are so detail and allow you to clearly understand and clearly see the effects of various placements of lighting, and how variations will affect the subject.
I never really understood what the KR numbers meant on certain filters, such as those made by B&W, but now I know, plus the section on filters shows their equivalents and how the light source and filter combined will yield a certain color temperature.
The section on color theory is also just so clear and the manner in which it is illustrated and presented is simply nothing short of the best imaginable. Many books try to skimp on printing costs and it the end it shows, but this is not the case here, the book publisher obviously worked closely in concert with the author and did not tell him “sorry, that would be too expensive to preset in that manner.”
If you buy this lesser known that that popular book by sheer number of volumes sold, you will not be disappointed. Incidentally, I also bought Prakel’s book on Composition and it is equally as good as this book. If you see David Prakel’s name on any book, you might give it a look as his thorough style and ease with words makes difficult things seems simple. As an electrical engineer and technical writer I strive to do the same, and the jury is still out on my results, but they have already returned a most favorable critique on this book.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Ning Zhao on March 28, 2010 - 8:14 am
I don’t know how many people are like me: I’ve got a reasonable DSLR that provides enough technical controls and delivers good image quality; I’ve learnt about stuff like aperture priority/shutter priority and different kinds of metering modes and have done exercises as a hobbyist. At some point, I felt the quality of my photos stagnate, they look like every other image on cheap postcards. After reading this book, I realized that lacking of good sense for natural lighting and lacking of knowledge of how to control artificial lighting was the problem.
This book is an excellent guide to understanding of the essentials of lighting: Which factors affects the lighting for landscape and architecture; What properties do “available lights” (for example street lights) have and how to make most of them; How are lights in studios set up for different categories of shootings (portrait, product packing, arty still life, etc). Some really exquisite lightings such as Rembrandt lighting and film lighting are also shortly explained with illustrations. Typical studio lights (the hardware) and their typical usage are also introduced with photos.
Text in the book is concise and focused without unnecessary smalltalks (personally I just do not like the writing style of the bestseller book “The Digital Photography Book”.), accompanied with a lot of example images. _Many_ technical sketches illustrating how the lighting was setup are just next to the example images. To me the examples and sketches are invaluable.
A book like this cannot give answers too all lighting setups you will need. But it explains the essentials really well. The quantity of examples and sketches in the book is just enough for studying closely and making sensible adjustment under particular situation. If one can internalize the content in this book and make a lot of exercises, she would definitely see improvement in her ever stagnated images.
This book talked almost nothing about retouching, but the knowledge I learnt from this book helped me in one way or another even when I was trying to retouch my photos.
If you are already an imaging professional, maybe you don’t need this book. For hobbyists or learners like me, I cannot recommend this book more. Even for absolute starters who knows nothing about focal length or DOF, this book helps.
-Ellen
PS: The version I read was this book’s German translation (published by Addision-Wesley)”Licht und Beleuchtung”. I suppose normally the translators wouldn’t alter the writing style of the original text.
Rating: 5 / 5