I've been reading Direction and Quality of light by Van Niekirk. If what you're looking for is a fairly easy to read book, where someone talks about specific lighting challenges, and chats about how he solved them, it's pretty good. Like most books on lighting that I've read it falls a lot more into the category of what I consider "lighting cookbooks" than "lighting textbooks". So far, the only book on lighting that I've read that starts out explaining principles, then explains in detail how those principles apply to different lighting situations is Light, Science and Magic. Direction and Quality of light has a little more discussion of principles than many books on lighting, but it is pretty anecdotal.
I think that the most important thing that he emphasizes is to pay attention to the light that is already there and what there is available to bounce light off of. Van Niekirk spends so much time referring to his equipment my brand and model, that I am beginning to suspect that he has worked deals with manufacturers, that if they give him gear, he'll mention it in his book. There is definitely valuable material in the book, and I have picked up a few things from reading it. It would be particularly useful to someone who has not read any books on lighting and isn't as interested in the theory behind the lighting setup as much as how to solve particular problems. -- Larry Colen [email protected] http://red4est.com/lrc -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
