What is Reddit's opinion of Light Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

For this type of photography, my guess is that the elements of success are:

Camera choice: 10%

Lens choice: 15%

Food prep skills: 25%

Mastery of lighting techniques for glass containers and liquids: 50%

A good book is Light, Science, and Magic

and the Strobist website mentioned in another comment is also very good to study.

For the camera, it might be important to pick one hat you can shoot tethered (connected to a computer) so you can use a big computer monitor or TV screen to preview the shot in the studio.

I'm a portrait photographer primarily. I wouldn't quite say I'm exactly where I want to be, but my photography has improved tenfold in the last 12 months, which I attribute entirely to deliberate effort.

For me, there are two major components- education and practice.

For education, I've proactively worked to educate myself with reading, watching, and asking lots of questions.

Here's a book I found invaluable to understanding light. The main focus is the behavior and characteristics of light, and would be useful for all photographers: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Magic-Introduction-Photographic/dp/0415719402/

Also, following photographers on YouTube/IG/etc. who make work I admire has been greatly helpful. Often, they're available for questions and providing feedback on your own work.

Reading and interacting with the community here has been incredibly useful as well, of course.

For practice, I've worked to establish a feedback loop which enables me to receive critique and evaluation from others I respect. Joe Edelman's TOG Chat group on Facebook provides the most insightful critique I've found and has been invaluable in helping me refine my work.

I also work to be critically honest with myself. This starts with reverse engineering work I admire so I can pick apart the elements which I appreciate.

What does this look like? I focus on the pose, clothing, background, lighting, retouching, sharpness, composition and any other elements of a given image which can be defined and manipulated by the photographer. Once I can understand these variables and how their manipulation changes an image, I can take intentional control of them during the photo-taking process, rather than allowing them to happen incidentally.

I think that these two components- education and practice, are the basis for becoming an "expert" in any field, especially photography.

One small footnote, if you're going to go with speedlights (instead of, say, LED panels) don't get the Yongnuo YN-560 gear he uses; get Godox TT600 or TT685 speedlights instead.

A TT600 is the same price as a YN-560 IV, the Godox XPro transmitter only slightly more than a YN-560-TX. But in the Godox system, there's a lot more room for expansion. And while you won't get remote zoom or wakeup like you would with the YN-560 gear, you will get HSS, which the 560 system doesn't do.

Godox supports TTL/HSS for Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, Olympus/Panasonic and Pentax and that support is (mostly) cross-brand.

Yongnuo only supports TTL/HSS for Canon, Nikon, and Sony, and all three of those systems are independent and incompatible.

Godox makes speedlights, battery-powered ministrobes and monolights, and AC-powered monolights and a pack and head system. And it's all in the same radio triggering system.

Yongnuo only makes speedlights and one ministrobe they copied from Godox's AD200, only they made it fixed instead of interchangeable head to make it cheaper, removing half a lot of what makes the AD200 the swiss army knife of pro lighting gear. And they now have something like five separate incompatible radio triggering systems: their 603/560 "manual" system, the 622 TTL/HSS system, a Sony-compatible system, and a Canon RT-clone system. Figuring out what works with what can be a massive headache.

Also, find Light: Science & Magic. It's the college textbook on lighting, and most of it pertains to product photography.

It's all about the angles at which you place the lights and lens to grab or avoid reflection. The college textbook you want for this is <em>Light—Science &amp; Magic</em>.

Light: Science and Magic That’s the book you want or buy, in addition to the lights.

The book covers photographic lighting. Knowledge is all you need here. With the right knowledge and a bedsheet and a window you could make plenty of nice images.

You really don’t need anything else than those things. Don’t get bogged down on gear, focus on knowledge.

These really are great skills to have as a photographer, and applicable to so many situations!

I'd really recommend Light: Science and magic to anyone who wants to learn about this.

Thank you! Yes it's a plate. I love shooting on dark tables, plates, and backgrounds. It can add really nice contrast to an image.

The most important thing for food photography is the styling so being a chef should give you a huge advantage. Grab the book Light Science and Magic to get an understanding of lighting and you will be producing masterpieces in no time!

Budget: $40

• Light Science &amp; Magic (Book) - An oft-recommended book here in \/r\/photography, it's a great resource for photographic techniques with regard to lighting.

To learn about lighting, try:

Light: Science and Magic - Fil Hunter and Steven Biver

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Magic-Introduction-Photographic/dp/0415719402/

"I am a photographer and am attempting to make jewelry. It doesn't come out as well as the ones in the Cartier catalog. What am I doing wrong?"

It looks exactly the same to your eye as it does to the camera, the difference is you are changing the angle of the light. It's all about the lighting, not the camera. Watch some YouTube videos on lighting gems/jewelry and get this book: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Magic-Introduction-Photographic/dp/0415719402/

You should definitely get a copy of &quot;Light - Science, and Magic.&quot; The link is to a digital copy from 2015, but print editions from earlier are available.

Look into the sections that discuss "inverse square law." They detail how the strength of the flash increases or decreases inversely to the distance between strobe and subject and camera. If one of your strobes is mounted on camera, this makes a huge difference, for better or worse.

Looking at your image, I'm seeing a main strobe high at top left, and a secondary at the bottom, to illuminate that lower edge of the cheek. The way the intensity of the light fades is exactly in accordance with the inverse square law, which is a nice touch, that wood should be used, for sure.

However, this same effect could easily be achieved with a single strobe, that main unit from top left. Using a reflector in place of that lower strobe, put the reflector under the synth, and angle it toward the main strobe. That will bounce up and light that cheek from the same angle, but... It would also free up your 2nd unit to illuminate the whole piece from the right, bringing out the detail in the lower front of the keybed, the lower edges of the mod and pitch wheels, the undersides of the knobs, and most importantly, the top edge of that rear wooden cheek. Yes, that's more like an advertising style, and maybe that's not what you're looking for. But, food for thought. Where I see shadows, I could be seeing details. Up to you and your artistic ideals.

I spent years getting deeply into photography, but have since drifted back towards music. I'm better with cameras, but more interested in music, even though I'm not nearly as good with the latter. With photography, my niche is macro work, photographing the miniscule with specialist lenses (the Canon EF 180 f/3.5L, and the Canon MP-E 65 f/2.8) so lighting distance and direction plays a massive role in my style. However, since bugs are my primary focus (sorry, bad pun) then the sun does a pretty good job in the flash department. Sometimes though, I use my flash kit (on and off camera) for different subjects.

I'm not one of those people who say "I only shoot in natural light." I think that's silly. We have flash, it is a wonderful tool, and we should make the most of it. We just need to learn how to use it to the best of our abilities. That book I linked to is a fantastic place to learn the fundamentals and a lot of neat tricks. By its name, it explains the science behind it all. The physics of how light dissipates or intensifies depending on distance, the way it is reflected from different angles, how it diffuses with different materials, how it is affected by the Kelvin scale. How to bounce light from different surfaces to maximize (or redirect/minimize) illumination. It's essential reading for anyone working with flash.

One of my favourite flash shots I did was absolutely simplistic, just a single strobe and a reflector and the sun. It was shot in broad daylight in midday of a Korean summertime, which is intensely bright. The sun came in from cam left, I had a reflector at cam right, and flash was reflected off the ceiling. All I did was set it to wide aperture to bring in as much light as possible, then counter with low ISO for smoothness, and high shutter speed so there was no time for the camera to capture ambient background light. Voila, a low key studio pitch black background created in blazing sunlight with just one flash, the sun, and a glorified piece of tinfoil. On auto settings, this would have been an awful, awful shot. But shooting manual, and thinking about light intensity and direction, plus standard manual settings, it came out quite nicely. It was the first time when I successfully captured the right balance between natural light and flash, so it always has a special place for me, even if it could be a lot better. It was my doorway into actually starting to understand the discipline.

Book you want: Light—Science &amp; Magic. I also think it just had a new edition where they updated the gear to include things like LED panels. It's the standard college textbook on lighting. It talks about reflections, surfaces, angles, all that jazz, and explains the principles behind what works and what doesn't with a lot of demonstration photos.

Yes, strobist blogspot, and the book Light: science and magic

The latter being more about how to use light in general.

Check out The Bite Shot andWe Eat Together are 2 nice channels. I can also HIGHLY recommend the book Light: Science and magic . It's a comprehensive work on photographic lighting.

And lastly, www.r-photoclass.com is a good resource for the photography fundamentals.

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Magic-Introduction-Photographic/dp/0415719402/

I can recommend the Strobist Blogspot for information on strobe lighting. It also has recommendations for equipment. Also the book Light: Science &amp; Magic is a treasure of information.

The thing with setups is, there is really no cut & dry solution. Since it's a skill, it depends on the product, backdrop, desired results, materials etc. That influences where you place the light etc.

Some pointers.

- Family of Angles decides if you will have reflections or not

- The size of the lightsource will determine the softness of the light. So a larger lightsource will generate softer shadows. Moving your light closer or further away, or using a smaller or bigger diffuser will influence the size of your lightsource.

- You can use foam-core boards in Black and White to add and subtract light from the image. Black absorbs light, white reflects it. This allows you to do more with a single light source.

- With a low budget, double or triple layer baking paper is a excellent form of diffusion.

Can also highly recommend the workphlo youtube channel.

>do I need like a continuous light source or will a speedlite work with a Bowens mount

You can use either one. Continious has the benefit of being able to see results with your naked eye. But it's much more expensive for the light output you get. Speedlights are lighter, easier to use on batteries and generate far more light for their size and cost. I personally recommend a speedlight as I feel like thats a more flexible solution, unless you have money to burn on some more expensive wall plugged video lights.

All of those can work with Bowens mount if the light or strobe has that mount point. Godox uses Bowens almost across the board. There is also a adapter ring for speedlights to bowens. So that works too.

>will I need a trigger for it if I put my speedlite in the octobox?

Yes you will need a trigger.

I recommend a Godox TT600 with a trigger for your camera body. Either the XPro or the X2T. Thats also what Strobist recommends and it's a very solid setup and easily expanded in the future since all their strobes use the same 2.4ghz wireless system.

Its lighting. The veneer you light just from above. That creates a very flat picture which doesnt show much texture.

What you want to do is light it from the side, make sure your camera isn't in the family of angles so you don't get a reflection, but you do get the edges to show up. Here is a example of that on a tennis ball.

As for the longer wood, yes getting a really wide lens would result in curving of the ends.Perhaps if you get a really nice wideangle prime you wont get much curvature, but if that solves your problem remains to be seen. I would just take a overview photo, and then some detail shots of the grain. Indicate that with a image which highlights the places of the close-ups. If thats not feasible and clients need to see the entire log, I would shoot a flat-lay type photo like the veneer of those bars, and just stich them together. So take a couple of photos and combine them later to create a long image showing the entire piece. Using the same lighting as described above.

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I can highly recommend the book Light: Science and Magic , which goes into the topic of lighting and how to use light in photography.

It's going to be about how you light the object—position and quality of light.

There's this book if you really want to explore this more in depth.

https://strobist.blogspot.com/

And the book: Light: Science and magic

Youtube is good to replicate something visually, see how somebody does it. It's not good for explaining why you do things that way. This book is.

You mean basic books on lighting? I would recommend Syl Arena's Lighting for Digital Photography, and the standard college textbook on lighting, <em>Light: Science &amp; Magic</em>.

Or, you could just hit the Strobist. But if you have no flash experience at all, I would highly recommend you just get yourself a speedlight, first, and master on-camera flash and bouncing. Neil van Niekerk's Tangents website is great for giving you the really ground-level zero flash basics. Much easier for learning if all you have to buy and learn at first is the flash. Blind recommendation gear-wise, get a Godox TT685 for your camera's brand.

What is it you're confused about with ratios? Ratios just mean your light groups are set to different brightness levels. But I wouldn't attempt multiple off-camera lights until you've mastered a single light. And I wouldn't attempt an off-camera light until you've mastered an on-camera one. Walk before you run; run before you fly.

The one book everyone photographer should read: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Magic-Introduction-Photographic/dp/0415719402/ref=dp_ob_title_bk