Technical Bible for Lighting

[gregkdavis]

Originally Posted by Carpe Imago

Gentlemen, thanks for your insights. As always, the insight from this post alone has paid for my membership.
As someone who tends to "over buy" and on occasion get in over their head, I think I'll be sticking with two lights...for now. I guess its like everything in this profession/hobby...start with the basics, get good at utilizing your equipment, and then expand from there based upon where you need or want to go. Learn to make due with less, and I suspect that ultimately I will be able to accomplish more with whatever equipment I have at my disposal.
Chip, my thanks for your feedback. Eldor, I'm gonna have to name a street after you or something with all the help you've given me!
My thanks!

I would suggest you start with three lights. If you are doing portraiture work.
Of course as others have mentioned, you can always add more, and eventually
you will because three lights will never be enough.

As far as light types. Well, I define lights by their properties.
Spot lights
Area lights
Ambient lights
Distant lights
Point lights
Linear lights
Volumetric Lights
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I could go on and on- but my training comes from a different field
and involves more physics type stuff than anything.

[Al_Nowak]

The thread seems to have been hijacked off onto a "how to - in one easy setup" direction. Nothing wrong with being helpful, but maybe an answer to the initial question is in order. What's a good lighting book?

The problem with lighting books (and I have lots so I can speak with some authority) is that they are generally written by people with specialities. One may be by a product photographer who deals with small glass items and shiny cars, another by a portrait photographer used to lighting weddings and CEO's for their boardroom portraits, yet another is by a guy who shoots senior pictures for yearbooks.

So unless your shooting matches up with the authors, you are not likely to find exactly what you want. Oh, they all will talk about the available equipment, and whether continuous lighting or strobe is best, and all the accessory items you can buy. Why not, it is generally pretty easy to write about, the manufacturer's will give you free images to put in the book, and it fills up about 30% of the pages without really too much work. Authors LOVE those kinds of things.

So let me suggest that before asking about a book, you figure out exactly what it is that you want to shoot, and in what style. When you can define that to me, I'll point you toward some books I've looked through.

There are some lighting books that get deep into the technical side and talk mathematically about lighting ratios, falloff characteristics, and exposure values.

There are also books that just show a bunch of pretty pictures with a sketch of the lighting set up and no discussion of the physics and rationale behind the set ups.

Judging by your "Lighting for Dummies" comment, I suspect you are looking for the second type... but I could be wrong.

So whaddya wanna shoot?

[jimmyd]

Originally Posted by moscato_images

you totally said "delete lights"



-j

that's right, beavis, i did. here's what i mean: suppose i set up 5-lights. i might decide, somewhere in the shoot , to delete a light or two out of the setup to produce a different result. capiche?

[JaysonFromMaine]

get the Dean Collins FineLight Vids ( if you can find them...)

these are really good to http://www.tiffanyphoto.com/tools.html