Basic Studio Lighting by Tony Corbell

Tony’ Corbell’s Basic Studio Lighting is a great book for getting you to think for yourself. While he does explain the basic concepts behind different lights, light modifiers, and light ratios, he makes sure to reiterate throughout the text that he is just providing examples as a starting point – you can choose what’s right for you depending on your photographic style.

Tony begins by reviewing the different types of lights, light modifiers, and when you might use them. In this book, he keeps the schematics simple so that the reader can focus on the conceptual technique rather than memorizing lighting setups. I appreciated his run-down of the different types of lights (main, fill, etc), and the order in which you should set up the additional lights.

The lighting and contrast ratios section was very clear, and gave me a pretty good mental understanding of the difference between 4:1, 3:1, and 2:1 ratios, as Tony refers to them, “highlight-to-shadow” ratios. I found issue with Tony’s method of discussing specular highlights in relation to the inverse square law. It seemed to me that he tried to combine too many explanations and oversimplify the answer, making this section unnecessarily complex. On the other hand, I finally found a clear definition of specular highlights! So, I’ll put up with the incongruity of his explanation of the inverse square law, since the rest of this book is so easy to understand. Other than the previously mentioned issue, this book was very clear, concise, and well diagrammed/illustrated.

Tony also briefly discussed Don Collins’ Chromazones method of using background gels. It was very reminiscent of the Zone System (except for color), and I enjoyed learning about the technique (Don was colorblind, and wanted an accurate way for clients to pre-select background colors).

This book is great if you want to gain a better understanding of not just WHAT to do, but WHY you might choose a particular method of doing something. It’s a great addition to any reference library.