Absolutely! My very-well thumbed copy lives on the corner of my coffee-table is my 'go-to' reference for lighting, espcially product work.
Okay, fair enough, but can you give me some details on what types of lighting it is useful for? For example, does it get into portrait photography? Is it for still images of items? Details please....
Thanks!
It's a book about lighting theory. How light works. Why it does what it does. It's not a book that will say "put the light here to get this look". There are far to many of those books already and they aren't worth the paper they are printed on. The market is flooded with books on photography, because photographers have realized that pushing out crappy books is a good revenue stream. Sorta like the glut of "workshops" out there. A large portion of them don't really say anything other than "this is what I do", which is useless.
As far as I'm concerned, it's more important to know how something works and how to make it work than to know how someone set up a particular shot. It's like people who always want to see the Exif data, as if they'll be able to just write down the values and go get the same shot.
LS&M is a great foundational text. If you are looking to learn portrait lighting/posing in particular, I'd advise starting with something like "Monty Zucker's Portrait Photographers Handbook". It covers traditional lighting and posing and gives the "why" behind the methods, not just a "do this" text. Portrait and wedding photography are quite popular, so you have to be a bit more careful looking for useful books in those genres as they are flooded with crap. :shock:
Also, check used listings on Amazon. I've seen some great deals there. I know Amazon is constantly sending me e-mails looking to buy back books I've bought that are used as textbooks in schools (LS&M being one of them) so I'd imagine they should have a collection of budget copies.
