lighting

This book is the bible for the industry.
As a professional photographer I have used the original version of this book extensively and I now use this newer edition even more. There is something for everyone in this book no matter your level of expertise in photography. You need this volume in your library!
Buy 2 because you will wear out the pages from overuse.
It answers your daily shooting problems professionaly and completely.
I hope he writes more books!!

Personally, I found this book very interesting and well worth the money. While the book is a little dated, it deals concisely with how to achieve a wide range of lighting techniques, both indoor and out, old and modern. The book is definitely biased towards commercial headshot photography but many of the techniques and ideas described are applicable to photographers in all fields, whether professional or amateur. Several areas I particularly liked were the hints and tips spread among the pages and the FAQ sections dealing with setting up in business, legal aspects, working with clients, retouching, etc.

There are some useful examples in this book, however there are certainly not 50! Many of the lighting setups shown are so similar it's hard to see any difference from one to the next. Most of the older b & w examples seem dangerously overexposed, again making each 'technique' undistinguishable. Some of the newer colour examples are quite out-of-focus which really doesn't help matters. I see this book more of a 'what not to do' guide. He manages to make one of the models look great in one shot, but gross in the next, and so forth. There are definately more useful, more up-to-date books that give better examples than this title.