Lighting Books

Without impugning Mr. Johnson's ability as a lighting designer, I thought his book was uneven at best.

It's hard to separate the book from the work it features: generally the overwrought, more-is-better, ego-stroking stuff that passes for architecture in this era which I hope against hope is not the twilight of American culture. Mr. Johnson's relegation of the architect to a subsidiary of the general contractor in his formula for a design team is telling-it is either the arrogance of the nouveau-riche who blusters, "Just design me the d--d house; I'll attach my architecture to it as I see fit!" -or a sorry statement on feeble, derivative design that is typically being put forth today.

Mr. Johnson is a clever engineer; his innovations, such as removing the silver and etching the perimeter of a mirror to conceal a bathroom light source, are efficient as well as beautiful. However, on the pages of his book, the miniscule diagrams of such details require a magnifying glass to be appreciated.

The best works featured in the book are the kitchens and bathrooms. To me, it is here that Mr. Johnson demonstrates his sensitivity, and acknowledges that shadow is as important as light in creating a pleasing effect.

Though creative, this book seems to be nothing more than a sales brochure for Mr. Johnson's firm. There is not enough substance in the book to allow anyone other than Mr. Johnson or his associates to create the design schemes shown in the book. Mr. Johnson's ADAPTIVE design is creative, but is given only in a generalized sense. There is no real design criteria (lumens/ft2, wattage for varying spaces, etc.)to help the reader know if all ADAPTIVE design elements are actually achieved if someone other than Mr. Johnson were to design the lighting scheme. Mr. Johnson's work is very beautiful and artistic. I only wish the book had more substance.

Those looking for "connect the dots" instructions for various lighting projects will probably be happier looking for more detail-oriented books, perhaps books in the Sunset or Black and Decker series.

That said, I rate this above the other dozen or so books I have recently acquired on this topic in preparation for working on a new house. The reason is simple: this is the book that suggests ways of thinking about lighting and demonstrates the consequences of planning -- or not planning -- in various ways. To think usefully, not to mention creatively, about lighting, I felt I needed a way to think about the overall impact. While other books provide lots of specific information about particular situations, this is the one that offers more of a systemic outlook.

But it is not lacking in specifics. It offers enough detail about every technical aspect of lighting that I finally feel able to listen more intelligently to lighting specialists and electricians. The information seems up-to-date, at least in terms of what's available in the market where we live, and it is the single book on the topic that I would not part with as we begin the day-to-day slogging through making another house into our home.

Don't buy this book if what you really want is a specific recipe to cook up half a dozen recessed lights and some task lighting in your kitchen. You'll be disappointed. But if you're willing to tease apart the vagaries of your particular space and suss out the special uses of your own kitchen, this book will reward you by empowering you to develop and evaluate lighting solutions for yourself.

The first half of this book focuses too much on why you should hire a lighting designer and promoting the professional associations he belongs to. Some of the photos are of very poor quality. Otherwise, it is well illustrated.

If you are looking to learn about how to design good lighting for a home you are going to build, then you should read this book. Glen Johnson does have a lot of good experience, and covers the basics well. Could do better though.

I purchased this book as I'm building a home. As a resource for unusual and striking architectual and accent lighting this book has it all. The photos and descriptive drawings have allowed me to work with my electrician to hopefully produce a great lighting design without an incredible cost.

This and the two related books (Natural Palettes and the Suzanne Butterfield book on palettes based on D. Kaufman colors)should be read attentively by anyone faced with painting a room. As beautiful as some of the illustrations are, these are NOT coffee table books to browse through. They are full of practical information for painting rooms, including rooms like mine with dark woodwork, hardwood floors, uneven walls, odd-shaped and leaded glass windows, etc. For example -- balancing cool and warm, contrasting or matching color values, using hue to stand up to strong trim, using flat paint to create a soft, smooth wall surface, what to do with dark rooms (Don't paint them white -- the resulting shadows emphasize that they are dark.), the importance of mixing paint colors without using black pigment and the importance of having the full spectrum of pigments in any paint hue, the effect that the color of light in the room will have on the wall color, and much more. The room descriptions are not prescriptions for what one must do but rather examples of the many different effects that can result using fully-pigmented paint of different value, hue, contrasts, etc. under different light conditions. The Butterfield book is a fairly simple presentation. "Natural Palettes" and "Color and Light," particularly the latter book, are sophisticated illustrated explanations of the basic "rules" of light and color through some of the myriad possible results. Read these three books with attention and be rewarded with an appreciation of color and light everywhere(in every house, apartment, store, restaurant, office, etc., on the street, the highway, in the sky, city, country -- you won't be able to help it!) Read these books and you will see, know and care about color and light forever. You'll also have no problem painting your rooms.

Two reasons to write this review. One is to counteract, or attempt to balance, the negativity of some of the other reader's reviews. The other is to bring to notice this exceptional book. The ideas that atmosphere, air and geographic location can influence color are not novel thoughts - Dutch master painters and the Provence of Van Gogh come to mind. But to apply such theories to the architectural and interior use of color has not been explored by enough people. Donald Kaufman was first an artist - this obviously influences his perception and methods of working with paint. The book is fascinating for the way it balances ethereal ideas with practical suggestions. The power and influence of localized light is described with excellent prose as well as lovingly selected photographs. Alongside such beauty are supremely helpful suggestions for using color and light in your own environment or in the spaces you are creating for others to enjoy. I have all three of Donald Kaufman and Taffy Dahl's books. Now I await a fourth!

THIS IS REALLY UNAPPEALING. THEY SHOULD HAVE CALLED THE BOOK "ATMOSPHERE FOR BEIGE ROOMS." IF YOU WANT A HOUSE WITH ALL THE CHARM OF "BUILDER BEIGE," THEN GO FOR IT. OTHERWISE, KEEP LOOKING FOR A REAL BOOK ON COLOR. (I HAVEN'T FOUND ONE I LIKE YET.)

I love color. I love light. So, I thought I would love this book. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This book is a borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring read. It's like a bad term paper. I dare you to find one idea to take away and use in your own life. The author talks AT you, pontificates, lectures, never asks you a question or makes room for you to react. Talk about over-intellectualizing a topic and taking the fun out of design! Bleah!

Beautiful book with great practical advice about how to choose colors for your home. I've gone gaga over Donald Kaufman's paints, and, although they are expensive, they are only a fraction of the price of Martha Stewart's line for Schreuder.

If you are looking for something that teaches the basics. This is the book for you. All pictures are well explained and easy to duplicate. Each shot is described well with a diagram of how the lighting was setup. Definitely one to have in your collection. This book could also help a pro by giving them posing ideas.

A lot of the techniques covered are still relevant and will continue to be, but some of the information is a little outdated (e.g. Visual styles and tastes change quite often). It also doesn't help that a lot of this info can be found for free online. It's still nice to have a handy reference, though.

pretty good book. many of the techniques are really detailed, which i like. after all, this book is a tutorial. the author has obvious partialities, but you know...? they work.

good job!

If you're going to teach something about lighting, it would seem that there'd be a lot of diagrams and a range of examples. And if you're about glamour, you'd think the photographic quality and print quality would be first rate. The book is only OK; there's maybe an hour's worth of info in it. There are much better books (like Steve Bavister's Glamour and Portrait books) that are full of explanations, diagrams, and ways to think about approaching your subject.

This book is awful. The pictures are not very good, there are a few diagrams but the pictures don't reflect the diagram. The woman are attractive and pretty - that's the only good thing I can say about this book. There are many other better choices for glamour photography than this book.

A good book, brilliant written, easy to understand and follow, there is no need to be an expert photographer to gain result from this book. Nice to see work and advice from both the USA and the UK and even a model I have worked with graces the pages. If you're new to glamour photography and studio work, or need a few tips as I did, this book will be a valuable aid. Best advice you will have this year, is buy this book.

Better for the beginner. Not bad...gives insight other books don't offer. It reveals, professionally, how to use what you have in your camera bag. Bidner & Beans' Lighting Cookbook gives you "qualitative" lighting. You can choose what to "add" to the model you're photographing..Glitz or Character, beauty is in both.

Has pretty good information for posing and lighting for Glamour & portfolios for getting good results for models and poses with the best lighting to highlight your results

This book is not as I expected. The photo setups are not illustrated as they should be. I must say that "Photographing People: Portraits - Fashion - Glamour" is best one I've seen so far.

There are some good examples regarding focal length and using lighting. A splattering of good professional advice mixed in with alot of average information. They could have done a much better job with the printing of the photographs. This was the biggest disappointment. Some of the photos are blurred or lose all detail. Many of the photos are too small to even see what the author is talking about. They should have editied down the text about 40 pages and do a better job printing the photos.

Overall its a good book.But the author is explaining the physical qualities of light too much which sometimes confuses & may not be required that much.Because physical qualities of light is different from CG lighting.So there is no point of comparison explained randomly.Well this book gives you fair understanding of 3DMax lighting interface & some techniques for intermediate users in good detail.And it evokes in you a quest to study the lighting in reality first with the eye of an artist.Then try to implement in your Max scenes.Which i think is a very good approach.e.g I improved certain elements of my lighting scenes like source of light,intensity,interaction with materials.I would like to read any advance book as well written by Mr Nicholas.

I got through, maybe the first eighty pages before I realized that I hardly new anything about lighting. This author is the master. He understands and explains real light so well that any artist could walk away with a brand new understanding of how to light. I never new before how inadequate MAX lights are, and how much has to be done to make them work like real lights. Now I know. My lighting will always be better and I owe a debt of gratitude to the author.

This book is really not very good at all. Looking at the cover you can see the standard of lighting in the book is not going to be great. The examples consist largely of scenes constructed from primitive spheres and cubes and don't go into any real depth...they are so far removed from real-world production problems that it is laughable. This is no surprise when you discover that the author has actually written a book on Lightwave lighting and though his production experience is fairly lengthy, these all seem to be Lightwave productions, as there is nothing within this book to suggest that the author's knowledge of 3ds max is anything but cursory. I think that if the makers of 3ds max saw this book they would be very disappointed that a book is available that makes their great application look so very very bad.

As a newcomer to 3DS Max, I was delighted to find this wonderful book to teach me about how to use lights properly. The author has written the book to give beginners a good grounding in lighting theory, and follows that with numerous examples of how to use lights to effectively light scenes.

I found the step-by-step approach very helpful in learning each and every parameter. I believe my lighting is much better now that I have read most of the book. I would highly recommend it to anyone wishing to learn lighting in 3DS Max

If you are already good at modeling and texturing, you really owe it to yourself, your models, and maps to pick this manual up and study it so that you can coax the most out of the many lighting options 3ds max gives you. You may say, well, I already know alot about 3ds max lighting. You may know enough to get by, but after you read this book, you will be doing more with 3ds max lighting than just getting by. This author will teach and give you alot of insight into how to properly manufacture different lighting situations. The majority of the book is of the ideals, practices, and methods you should employ while being concerned with lighting. There is not very much actual 3ds max lighting work or training, hence the 4 star rating, but the way in which this type of information is presented is probably the best choice for "understanding lighting for the long haul." The author takes the approach of explaining everything about light to you in detail, then essentially leaves it up to you how you proceed from there based on what you have learned about light, NOT JUST 3DS MAX LIGHT! I agree with this method. I would rather understand light, and in turn be able to apply that in 3ds max with much greater effect than just knowing what the 3ds max tools do, but not why they work the way they do. 2 different mindsets really, and I'll bet that the student of light first, will produce higher quality overall results most of the time if not all of the time. This author writes very well, and I liked his book alot. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is because although the included tutorials are reasonable and serve the purpose, perhaps at least one or two complex/advanced lighting effects, or exercises could have been included to really blast the reader off in the right direction and give the user a concrete notion of how to tap the lighting power. Even without this though, this book is worth your time. It will make a very noticable difference in renders, and will unlock the world of lighting to you. Maybe it would be nice to see this author offer other cg topics in the future!

Dodging, toning and related topics for the advanced printer. Skips basic lessons on the orginal print process and delves right into advaced techniques; superb in this regard. Split contrast printing delt with in detail. If you wish to use VC papers this book would be a good investment, as he teaches a printer some really crafty tricks in this area (such as using a #1 filter to burn-in clouds while using a #3 or 4 filter for the rest of the exposure). Great for fine art printers everywhere.

I am an avid B&W photographer who does all my own darkroom work. i have many books on the science/art of B&W and use VC papers (FB and RC) exclusively. I looked forward to reading Eddie Ephraum's treatment of this with great anticipation. Yet I was, overall, disappointed. Frankly I am not impressed by his work anyway which I am sure contributed to my feelings in this regard. This book is useful if you are an avid toner and want another perspective on the issue, but overall my two star rating is generous!

This book is invaluable to anyone struggleing to make prints like the master printmakers. Picture by picture analysis of negatives, lighting, exposure and split filtering to make it all work. While I do not take the kind of pictures used as examples, there is something in each one that is applicable to a very broad range of photographs. Thanks Eddie!

I was disappointed in this book because I had expected useful information and techniques. The photographs chosen do not seem to convey much and the "technical" explanations of the manipulations involved to utilize the characteristics of variable contrast papers do not (for me) illuminate the process at all! In fairness to the author my dissatisfaction may well stem from the fact that I quite simply do not relate to his photographic style and fail to see anything here worthy of emulation.

I was looking for a good book for learning how to use split printing on variable contrast papers and any other useful sort of tips...P>Mostly this is a book about how this individual person used techniques to create certain prints that he fancies very good. Frankly, I'm not very impressed with most of them, and in fact I think the color slides -- that are shown to illustrate the scene "as it was" in comparison to the b&w negatives he took -- are often better than the resultant b&w print. Moreover he uses color toning as a crutch to prop up his inherently weak photographs; I have nothing against toning, and in fact I think a couple of the prints in here are quite good and helped by the toning, but if the print can't stand on its own, blurring it for "artistic effect" and toning doesn't really help that much.

While he discusses the methods used to create each print, he does not discuss them very fully, and he doesn't usually say how he came to choose those methods to get the "best print" he could. There is some how-to info in the back but it's not very comprehensive.

If I had known this was how the book was before, I would not have bought it. There is simply far too much white space and not enough useful information for someone wishing to learn the techniques to improve their own prints.

This book was WAY over my head. It was a struggle to understand and I did not finish but about half of it. If you are not an advanced lighting technician you should look for a more simple SB-800 guide. I wish I had known this before I purchased it. Nikon has a CD that I wish I had purchased instead. This book was too technical for me.

I like this book. Unlike most of the book in this series that mostly written for people who lost a manual this one goes far beyond manufactures manual. Even if you a not a Nikon flash users it contains some information that could be interested for anyone in flash photography.

Here's a book aimed at Nikon camera owners using the speedlights that make up the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS). Perhaps the most innovative function of this system is the ability to exercise a new degree of control in the use of multiple lights.

The book starts out providing some basic flash concepts and explaining Nikon's nomenclature (which is often confusing because of the similarity of terms over the years) for its different flash modes. The author follows with a discussion of flash techniques, including direct flash, bounce flash, and repeating flash. The most practical chapters tell you how to use a single speedlight to take pictures, and how to use multiple speedlights. Finally, there are descriptions of both the early digital speedlights, i.e., the SB 28DX and the SB-80DX and then the components of the CLS. There is an addendum on the D80 which has a built-in speedlight that works with the CLS, and which probably was necessitated by Nikon bringing that camera to market as the book was going to press.

The book is aimed purely at the technical side of using these speedlights and does not touch on the artistic use of the lights. This book probably was in response to the difficulty that some people had in understanding the manuals that come with Nikon products, and integrating the manuals from several different products. But this effort at integration creates its own brand of confusion. The author tries to tell you how to use the products with both film and digital cameras, but since the automatic features of the CLS have to be handled differently for film and digital cameras, the instructions are somewhat confusing. I suggest you go through the book with a magic marker and highlight the sections applicable to your type of camera (and if you shoot both film and digital, you'd better use both a yellow and a blue marker!)

Moreover, don't think you can skip over any of the material, because important information may just have a passing reference in an unusual place. It took me several readings to understand that I could not use my SB-28DX with a digital camera for multiple speedlight use. (That's not altogether true - it's possible to shoot in manual mode, but if you are going to do that, you lose all the advantages of modern speedlights. You're better off junking your old SB-28DX and getting a new CLS speedlight).

There are several pictures included in the book but they are of a rather pedestrian nature and add nothing to one's understanding of Nikon speedlights. Additionally, except for the cover there is no color printing in the book. Finally, for a system that has been on the market for a couple of years, this book looks like it was rushed to market with many typographical errors.

The Nikon CLS system offers unprecedented opportunities for photographers to use flash for better pictures. However, if you are looking for ideas on increasing your creativity, look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you are still having a problem with the technical side of your speedlight, like how to set your SB-800 to control the lighting balance of a second flash, this book will prove useful to you.

I have been looking for help with the Speedlight system for over a year - since first purchasing my SB-800. There only ones I found were out-of-print and obviously too outdated to matter anyway! If you think figuring out how to access all the power of one model is difficult, just imagine trying to cover all the models Nikon has produced since it introduced TTL. Add to that the fact that Nikon bodies change the available features. (The current digital bodies like D200 are covered as well). A daunting prospect for any author. So the good news is that I found the book very helpful and it clears up a lot of my confusion. The bad news is that you must sort thru a lot of info about Speedlight models and film bodies that you are unlikely to own.

I have Simon Stafford's "The new Nikon compendium" and use it all the time as reference. I purchased the current book before purchasing a Nikon R1 flash kit. While Mr. Stafford mentions the compatibility problems between various camera bodies and this kit, no mention is made (in the book) of the fact that you CANNOT use the R1-kit, or the SB-R200 flash system, with a stack of Nikon LENSES - they are incompatible - and serious damage may result, esp when using AF. Nikon says "the weight of this Speedlight when attached to the front of the lens will cause excess strain on the barrel and helicoid, affecting lens performance". Whilst thankfully I have not damaged my lens (found the fine print in the manual before using the kit), I would have liked Mr. Stafford to have done his research, and I would have liked to have been warned! I have spent a lot of money on the R1-kit after reading this book. Not happy.

Then I tried to refer to the book on how to use the Nikon D200 camera in commander mode with the new Nikon CLS speedligths. And while I could find the info on how to set up the SU-800 controller, I just could not find any info on how to set up the camera itself to act as a commander, when not using the SU-800 commander. My camera does not need the SU-800 commander, so I don't own one. So I ended up refering back to the Nikon camera manual to find out which menu item to set and how. Hmmm. Shouldn't this info be in the book? Easily accessible and indexed?

Anyone want to buy a slightly used book about the Nikon AF Flash system?

I am halfway through the book, and I think it is a good book. It has helped me so far by helping me to understand how a game engine is designed, organized and coded in general. Holistically looking, this book is more about organizing (code-wise) all programming aspects of computer game development. It won't teach you to design a perfect object model for making a game engine, but it uses object oriented concepts moderately to build a coherent one. I think this book raises the skill level of an elementary game engine developer to junior or intermediate level. Please notice that your programming knowledge in C++ must be already intermediate or at least beyond beginners. Comparatively, five star for this book is fair.

This book is excellent. It is technically well written and easy to follow. The Author is obviously very knowledgeable in game programming and DirectX.

The Good :
- Well organized.
- Good examples.
- The TEXT is easy to read.
- The code can be complied, built, and run without
receiving errors.

The Bad :
- The code included on the CD-ROM doesn't always
match the code covered in the text. Sometimes
little changes have been made, but at other times
ENTIRE functions appear out of nowhere.

The Ugly :
- The author's coding practices and techniques are
HORRID. They are by far the worst that I have ever
come across in any computer science book that I
have ever read. His rare use of spaces makes the
code very difficult to read. Also, the names that
he gives his variables are nothing short of
ludicrous. Many of them make absolutely no sense.


In my experience, people who write code that is this hard to follow, have very little experience working with other programmers. This is a guy who has a computer information systems degree from DeVry and I'm guessing is only a hobbyist at best. Don't get me wrong, there are some good DirectX points made in this text, but the heart of any programming text is always the code.

Rather cryptic title I put for my review, but the book seems to follow the same route.

I purchased another book awhile back: Programming a Multiplayer FPS in DirectX - very well written and organized.

Ultimate Game Programming has a lot of "bugs". The program as you go along seems to fall apart, what is in the book isn't exactly the same as the code provided on the CD Rom. The author leaves out information as to what header files are required, where you should place some of your code. As said before the key failure is the difference in code from book and Rom.

Aside from the bad points. Good points. I do like the some code in the pages provided, even though I must realize it might be different on the Rom. Mainly because I'm using another book and this to help solidify my DirectX concepts.

So considering I have the Microsoft documentation, another book from the same publisher on programming in DirectX and now this, I have to really research and piece everything together.

The coding is really night and day too. The book by Vaughn Young, really sticks to appropriate coding practices, while this seems quickly written.

Just to establish my own credentials - I'm a game developer with 5 published titles under my belt including Master of Orion 3, Kohan 2, Axis & Allies, and two Zoo Tycoon 2 games.

I was asked on very short notice to teach a Game Development class at a local college. So off I went to Borders to find a textbook. After some digging, this is what I picked out. The features that recommended it to me where that it included the source code, and over the course of the book it promised to build a fully functional game.

Here's what I found instead:

* I would guess from his terminology that the author has never worked at a game company. He just doesn't know the lingo - or he's worked somewhere so remote from my own experience that his lingo is completely different. Also, based on the quality of his code and the quality of the resulting game, he wouldn't survive a second at any game company out there. He wouldn't make it past the phone interview. If you are considering a career in game development, do NOT follow this person's example or you won't even get in the door.

* The code is the most horribly written I have ever seen. I would expect better out of anyone who has ever taken any sort of class on object oriented programming - or worked on any sort of project employing more than one person. The best way to describe it is poorly written C code written in C++. The spacing is non-standard. That variable names are horrible. For many of the programs, it's all in the main.cpp file. Global variables everywhere. Hardly any use of classes, and where they are used they are monolithic and poorly designed. Ugh.

* The book is frequently innaccurate. It needs an errata list badly - but if there is one, I haven't been able to find it. For example, in chapter 1 he tells you that you only need 1 line of code to enable z-buffering. After talking to colleagues and looking on the web, I was able to get this to work (I'm an AI guy, not a graphics guy) - but he was missing 4 of the 5 lines needed to make it happen.

* The book also tends to be incredibly light on details. It tells you the DirectX functions you need to call (mostly) and the specific values to plug in - but not what the functions do, or what the other possible values for their paramaters are, or how the parameters affect the output. The style of the writing is also incredibly informal - it sounds like something written by a 10th grader. Granted, if the quality of the content was solid I wouldn't care about this - but added to the poor content it makes the whole thing feel unprofessional.

* The quality of the final game is what I would expect out of a high school project (at best). The collision detection is horrifically buggy. The characters don't animate or move at all (although my understanding from looking at the book is that they're supposed to). The code won't compile under VS2005, only VS2003. It also won't run without a game controller plugged in to the computer - but it doesn't appear to actually use the game controller. He's been promising since the book came out to post the fixes for those last two problems on his web site, but I couldn't find them.

All in all, this book is an embarassment. I'm sorry I made my students spend the money on it - and now I'm scrambling to find material to teach my class, because this book hasn't delivered anything close to what it promised.

I found Mr Gallardo's book extremely informative on the history, theories and science of light. Also, the light array models used in the tutorials gave me some nice insights for my own work.
Unfortunatley when I went to use the tutorials I found that the required plug-ins of the third party texture creator (Dark Tree) didn't work with 3D Max 4. The demo for the upgrade of this product wasn't available and I had to try to simulate the tutorial using Max's on material editor. I'm dissappointed that the author did not use these materials in the first place. I would also caution anyone utilizing these tutorials to have a decent computer to run them on. Some of the exercises use a lot of grouped lights along with raytracing and it can take some time to see the results.

I would like to second the Amazon Technical review. This is a fantastic book that covers everything from theory to application. For students who really want to understand the whys, whats and hows of lighting I think this book is indispensable. In fact I will be using this as a text for a lighting and materials 3D animation class that I teach.

Darkling Simulations now have their updated Max r4 plugin (Simbiont) as well as the updates for LW 6.5/7.0b and trueSpace 5.1 and are available online as a demo if you do not have Darktree 2.0. This update will make it possible to use the tutorial scenes with MAX r4.

This book should be thrown in the waste basket. I have no doubt that Mr. Gallardo knows his stuff, but he really can't explain it to an average MAX user. Majority of book was full of run-on sentences and prepositional phrases strung together. His writing style was so distracting, I had to throw the book in the waste basket to calm me down. I have the feeling that Mr. Gallardo had to fill those pages so the book will look more impressive. Don't impress me. Stop printing this book and save the forest.

This book looks and reads so much like a textbook that it made me think back to my high school biology class. It's a big solid book, and walks through definitions of a lot of terms and concepts, but unfortunately it wasn't very useful or relevant to rendering 3D scenes.

I wish that more of the sections had been tied together or made relevant to 3D graphics. For example, the lengthy chapter on the anatomy of a human eye could have been copied from an encyclopedia or anatomy book, and just seemed pasted-in to this book, without leading into any conclusions or techniques related to making your own images.

Some of the most important parts of the lighting process (that I'd like to do more of in my projects!) weren't covered at all - there was nothing about matching the lighting from real-life background or combining and compositing your renders with real footage, there was nothing about casting and receiving shadows and reflections from real-world scenes, or rendering multiple layers and compositing them to build more realistic surfaces.

The actual images and sample scenes in the book were very basic - the author never moves to anything more sophisticated than lighting that same statue head and model of his desk scene, none of the images in the book are any more challenging or professional. (I give this book 2 stars to reward the author's effort, but if I were grading this book on how useful it was to me I only would have given it only 1 star, because it didn't teach anything new or useful.)

I loved this book because it's mainly photos and not so much text! Also, it has a diagram of how the photographer placed the lights, so that kinda gives you a hint!

I have been collecting books on photo technique for almost 5 years now. I have been a big fan of the pro lighting series books and have most of them in my collection. I find that these books are really great for inspiration and to answer the "how was it done?" question. "Lighting for Glamour" seems to feature more of the types of photos I find in my magazines. Which is nice. I would recommend going to a local store and looking this and the pro-lighting series books over first before buying and then get the 30% off discount on Amazon.

This book uses VERY editorial fashion photographs as examples... but does'nt explain the VERY complicated lighting. It shows a very basic diagram, thst looks to me like the author made up without the input of the actual photographer.

At no point in the books sample pages nor in it's summary does it warn the reader/buyer about the pornagraphic content of the sample photos.I have no objection to artists compiling books around their interests, but PLEASE let the buyer know that the content of the photos may be objectionable.Or at the very least, include them in your samples. I found this book to be quite offensive rather than instructional, and I returned it back to Amazon.Very dissapointed.

Bavister's book is full of "cookbook" style lighting setups with one, two, three, and more lights. While the clean, uncluttered diagrams make them easy to recreate, the book does assume that you have the lights, reflectors, gobos, stands, and other equipment required. In short, you're going need studio gear to pull off most of the shots.

That said, great photos, with lots of different styles and variations, make this a book I often pull down simply to spark my creativity. If Bavister had published it as an art book, with out the studio setups and diagrams, it would still have been worth the price.

One note: some reviewers don't understand that, in the photography world, glamour is often a euphemism for nudes. The fact that Amazon didn't mention that the book contains them is no reason to downgrade it.