Lighting for Digital Video and Television

by John Jackman and John Jackman

Book Overview

This book gives a comprehensive overview of lighting equipment and techniques for digital production. Suitable for either beginners or more advanced users, the fully updated fourth edition covers... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0240812271
• ISBN13: 9780240812274
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Truly Useful From Novice to Advanced

I first became aware of what effect lighting has when I watched a critical review of Casablanca. While the movie was running, at this point the reviewer would point out how lighting accented Ingrid Bergman's cheeks. At that point he would point out how lighting drew your attention to Bergmand and Bogart while dark shadows in the background filled in the image but down played its importance. Over time I began to learn more about lighting as I tried different things (generally photographing industrial equipment). I learned, slowly, that you put a light here to do this, and one over there to do that. I bought a few books on the subject, but I never tied it together. Now here in one volume is the whole story. From types of lights, to where shadows should fall on a models face, from patterns in the room background to doing highlights where and how you want them. The back cover of the book says it's User Level is from Novice to Advanced. That's right. I think everyone will get something useful out of this book.

EN-LIGHTNING

In the 1st Chapter of his book the author invites us to join him along for the journey in the lighting world of television and video with a promise that by the end of this journey i.e. of the book, we will be able to understand and create with the lights in our own digital frames.I finished the book, it realy was a journey and Mr. Jackman kept his promise.Thank you Mr.Jackman

A Great Book! Get a Better Picture!

Hey all,I'm a long time worker in multimedia and the performing arts (with a theatrical education). I did a lot of theatrical lighting as slave labor back in college, but beyond that, most of my experience in film and video was from the acting side.So before shooting my next short, I decided I needed a primer in film lighting. I bought Mr. Jackman's book about a week and a half ago and, well, for geeks like me, it was a real page turner.Aside from the fact that I needed to covert all of my theater vocab (cables) to film vocab (stingers) I also found the perspective on DV film making to be dead on in this book.This book starts out outlining the technical aspects of electrics and lighting. While not the most exciting for a lot of people (although I got excited and immediatly tested all of my wall sockets with my old fluke multimeter) these sections read quick and are a necessary setup for the rest of the book. After the technical aspects are discussed, the book goes in a direction which I genually appreciate.Instead of treating DV and Video lighting like bad flat TV lighting, Mr. Jackman really goes out of his way to help all of us little guys with PD-150s and the like to light our DV dynamically and artistically. Often the book shows more thrifty workarounds for expensive concepts.While this book isn't going to contain much new information for the experienced gaffer. It will definetly help any novice, new-comer, or, like me, semi-knowledged person increase their skills in the art of lighting.Hopefully more people will read this book and less badly lit short films will infest the world. Then we can give all those die hard film guys a run for their money. To paraphase the book: The camera and medium are just tools, they don't think, we do.Finally, just to ram my point home: the book answered at least 8 of the top ten questions in the dv.com forum in great detail. It has links and addresses to all of the big lighting manufacturers as well as a pretty cool glossary in the back.

Great Book!

Hey all,I'm a long time worker in multimedia and the performing arts (with a theatrical education). I did a lot of theatrical lighting as slave labor back in college, but beyond that, most of my experience in film and video was from the acting side.So before shooting my next short, I decided I needed a primer in film lighting. I bought Mr. Jackman's book about a week and a half ago and, well, for geeks like me, it was a real page turner.Aside from the fact that I needed to covert all of my theater vocab (cables) to film vocab (stingers) I also found the perspective on DV film making to be dead on in this book.This book starts out outlining the technical aspects of electrics and lighting. While not the most exciting for a lot of people (although I got excited and immediatly tested all of my wall sockets with my old fluke multimeter) these sections read quick and are a necessary setup for the rest of the book. After the technical aspects are discussed, the book goes in a direction which I genually appreciate.Instead of treating DV and Video lighting like bad flat TV lighting, Mr. Jackman really goes out of his way to help all of us little guys with PD-150s and the like to light our DV dynamically and artistically. Often the book shows more thrifty workarounds for expensive concepts.While this book isn't going to contain much new information for the experienced gaffer. It will definetly help any novice, new-comer, or, like me, semi-knowledged person increase their skills in the art of lighting.Hopefully more people will read this book and less badly lit short films will infest the world. Then we can give all those die hard film guys a run for their money. To paraphase the book: The camera and medium are just tools, they don't think, we do....