Creative Flash Photography: Great Lighting with Small Flashes: 40 Flash Workshops

The subtitle of this book is the best description of what you’d find inside: Great Lighting with Small Flashes: 40 Flash Workshops. Over the course of 290 pages, this book breaks down numerous techniques into digestible chunks – 40 chapters discussion subjects which range from portraits to product photography and macro photography.What is particularly impressive me about Tilo’s work and this book – the variety in subjects.What is particularly impressive me about Tilo’s work and this book – the variety in subjects. Over the course of 290 pages, this book breaks down numerous techniques into digestible chunks – 40 chapters discussion subjects which range from how to light and shoot portraits to product photography and macro photography.The author concentrates on speedlights and affordable accessories. So the techniques are well within the reach of every photographer.The material in the book is easily accessible – the techie stuff is also distributed in each chapter as Tips, Tricks and Notes. There are also side-bar articles and In-Depth notes within each Workshop chapter, where topics are discussed on their own. There are also notes on any Photoshop techniques he used in post-processing an image.For transparency, I should mention that I know the author. I am impressed with his work … which beautifully illustrates this book. I should also mention that I bought my own copy of this book, because I had high expectations of Tilo in this regard.

This is a very practical book that provides a lot of very useful and practical tricks. The explaination is each scene is very thorough and really focused on making sure that readers understand how to recreate the photos in this book. Definitely recommended for any one who wants to improve lighting skills.

This is what i expected !!!I red a lot of reviews from differents books. I was looking a book with new ideas (to me), simple setups made at home, try differents things, new things, inverted lens to do macro, use flashes and gels, take simple product images (at home, no studio), etc. and this book really have all this and more.Really happy with the book.I will buy more from Tilo, that's for sure.This is not a book for beginners, if you are learning about aperture, speed, ISO, flash, off-flash, etc., don't buy this book of course, first buy a book for beginners; but, this is your second book !

Happy with this purchase. It is a very technical book. It has allowed me to experiment with flash light and achieve creative effects. Get out of the comfort zone. It has a lot of effective information and very good tips on the use of flash. It is for photographers with more advanced knowledge and an excellent guide for settings and use of different types of artificial light creating different environments. Yes, I recommend this book to have it in your shelf for frequent consulting.

This book provides readers with easy to follow directions for producing amazing shots. It not only tells readers "how" to set up shots, but it also helps readers to understand "why" they are being set up that way. It also shows post-processing tips for most of the shots. Great book.

Good book, good price

informative

Way to much of the book is on tabletop and product photography. Lighting food multiple times, a guitar, a watch chocolate, noodles gets to be a bit over saturation of tabletop stuff.

This book is cleverly designed around a series of 40 lighting “workshops”: each one a lighting exercise that you can follow along with at home (or in the field). There are 12 workshops on portrait and fashion; 4 workshops on macro; 6 workshops on still life and product shots; 11 on food; and 5 on high speed flash. The book is top and tailed with an introduction to off camera flash (‘What every Strobist Needs to Know’) and some technical appendices that frankly I skipped over.The workshops are the meat of the book and they are intelligent and challenging. I’ve been using off-camera flash for a few years and I’ve read the mandatory Strobist Lighting 101 and 102, but I still learnt stuff (and enjoyed replicating some of the shots). The image I've attached to this review shows an example of one image I created loosely based on one of the workshops. Each Workshop takes a situation (like ‘Shooting for eBay’), describes the lighting setup. the camera settings and the shooting procedure, how the image was post-processed and adds some tips and tricks. Each workshop is very well illustrated with both the resulting images and also many behind-the-scenes pictures.The only criticism I’d make of the book is that occasionally the author does something unusual but doesn’t explain it well enough to follow along. Although the book is clearly aimed at photographers with some lighting experience, this doesn’t excuse difficult-to-follow descriptions. For example, in Workshop 4 the author describes a way to use pseudo-HSS with a Speedlight, a radio trigger and a studio flash. I re-read the chapter a couple of times but I’m still not sure I’ve understood it. This is the reason I’ve given it 4, rather than 5, stars.I chose this book mainly on the fact that it had a foreword by Mr Strobist himself, David Hobby. However, Mr Hobby’s forward doesn’t mention the book at all: it simply describes his own history as a photographer, an off-camera flash enthusiast and a blogger. I’m not entirely sure if David Hobby even read the book. Nevertheless, if you’re already comfortable with using off-camera flash and now want to push your knowledge further, this is an excellent resource. Alternatively, if you’re still at the beginner stage, I’d recommend Syl Arena’s, "Speedliter's Handbook”.

There are a lot of books out there on photography, and quite a few on flash all of which say the same thing. This is one of the better ones, and includes a number of exercises/projects for the reader to improve their technique. All of it is aimed at the user of speedlights, and most of the set-ups don't require laods of equipment (the odd one or two do though). One of the more useful books on photography I have encountered.

very good book

Devo dire che ho trovato utilissimo questo libro. In esso si trovano opportunamente ordinati in maniera logica e con difficoltà crescenti tanti esempi di fotografie fatte tutte con l'uso di uno o più semplici flash di tipo cobra alla portata di tutti con una minuziosa descrizione delle varie impostazioni e tanti esempi. Utilissimo per chi, come me, vuole realizzare foto quasi da studio. Lo consiglio davvero a chi fosse interessato a questo tipo di fotografia.

I think this book is one of the best books about flash photography. I goes into math and formulas, but explais in very easy way all about speedlight, by using examples and tutorials. Amazing book!!!!