It's very useful | Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers

The Best | Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers | Christopher Grey

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	• Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers Christopher Grey Amherst Media, Inc., 2004 - 128 pages average customer review:based on 71 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not exactly inspiring

I think people have very different expectations for these kinds of books, and this one did not at all meet mine. While Master Lighting Guide is very thorough and really gets into the basics of the different kinds of portrait lighting it totally fails to inspire. The photography in this books is very dull and really reminds me of the faded portraits you see plastered to the windows of sad photo stores and barber shops.

I was very excited about getting this after reading the Amazon reviews, but I am not just looking for a good book on lighting - I am looking for a book that shows examples of contemporary portraits of exceptional quality that makes me want to know how it was done, makes me feel like getting out there and do some myself. I think a previous reviewer was right when he/she suggested that the cover really gave you an idea of what was to be expected of the book - to me the cover shows you the behind-the-scenes of a very predictable and rather boring, maybe even tacky, portrait.

The pictures that Amazon chose above are really the best ones in the book.

To sum up: if you are looking for a good, solid, no-nonsense guide with numerous example on how different lighting set-ups work, then this is a good place to start. However, if you are looking for exciting, top-class, professional photography then search elsewhere (I still haven't found the perfect combination of education and inspiration - "Lighting for Portrait Photography" by Steve Bavister has some higher quality images but it really is rather weak on information, they don't really compare..)

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It's very useful

I have found it very useful and well written. It's simple to understand also for a beginner in studio lighting.
It mainly treats studio strobe lights.
You can find a lot of example for studio lights arrangements: all of them perfectly explain with pictures and photos.

The Best

This is the Best lighting book I have read. Christopher Grey is the Master.

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Excellent style and content

I promised to do a wedding portrait for my niece and, as a long time advanced "amateur", I new nothing more than my Canon 580Ex flashes on my 5D. This book helped me set up a nice studio with some strobes, a softbox and made it straight foward with a strong foundation in a short time.

I really appreciated the discussions on proper metering, light placement and the diagrams. One gem was the combination of sequential photos as the lights were moved and adjusted - you could see the changed effects as they happened and the final shot evolved.

I had bought about 5 books on the subject and this was, by far, the most useful and realistic for the way I learn.

The portraits came out great and I now look at studio photos in a completely new light (pun intended).

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A good start!

This book gives a good start into portrait lighting. It covers a variety of techniques and gear. The only thing I wish were different is to see more photos of the lighting set-ups instead of the flat line drawings. It would be a greater help to see the height and placement of the pieces of equipment used. In some cases though it is more obvious than in others. All in all the book is worth the price for the new guys and gals.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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