Product Description

Use every amazing option your Nikon CLS offers

Light is the essence of photography. The Nikon Creative Lighting System lets you create the same lighting patterns with a portable, detached, wireless system that professionals achieve using cumbersome and expensive studio equipment. This practical guide is like having an expert at your elbow. It′s packed with information about the CLS as well as tips, tricks, and recommendations for lighting a dozen different shooting situations. Take it on every shoot and get the most from your CLS.
∗ Know all about the features and functions of the SB–800 and SB–600
∗ Get insider tips for creating flawless portrait lighting and staging the best poses
∗ Set up masters and remotes, flash modes, channels, and groups
∗ Choose equipment for a wireless studio
∗ Use the ideal exposure and Speedlight system settings for shooting events, nature, sports, groups, portraits, or products

Visit our Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139339 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Back Cover
Use every amazing option your Nikon CLS offers

Light is the essence of photography. The Nikon Creative Lighting System lets you create the same lighting patterns with a portable, detached, wireless system that professionals achieve using cumbersome and expensive studio equipment. This practical guide is like having an expert at your elbow. It′s packed with information about the CLS as well as tips, tricks, and recommendations for lighting a dozen different shooting situations. Take it on every shoot and get the most from your CLS.

• Know all about the features and functions of the SB–800 and SB–600
• Get insider tips for creating flawless portrait lighting and staging the best poses
• Set up masters and remotes, flash modes, channels, and groups
• Choose equipment for a wireless studio
• Use the ideal exposure and Speedlight system settings for shooting events, nature, sports, groups, portraits, or products

Visit our Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks

About the Author
J. Dennis Thomas has been an avid photographer since his teens, eventually earning a degree in Photographic Technology. Denny currently owns Dead Sailor Productions, a photography and graphic design business. He has worked with companies including RedBull Energy Drink, Obsolete Industries, Secret Hideout Studios, and Digital Race Photography. Denny′s work has been published in several regional publications and continues to be shown in various galleries throughout the country.

Customer Reviews

Not very useful
If you can handle the small text and monochrome of the Nikon manuals (pages 71 - 106 for the SB800), and you have time to surf the forums at photo.net, or nikonians.org, you'll learn more than you can from this book. Much of it is dedicated to photography generals not specific to the Nikon Creative Lighting System (e.g. posing techniques, using flash outdoors, etc.) and for these things there are other books that are much better (e.g. Steve Bavister's 'Lighting for Portrait Photography').

Straightforward and instructional.
As part of my own personal conversion from film to digital photography, I recently purchased almost every book and tutorial DVD relevant to my new cameras (Nikon D300) and overall situation. I am a self-taught photographer whose work has been widely published for over 30 years including by National Geographic. Having learned little or nothing from any of the DVDs (very disappointing!), I have found books to be the best for overall value.

With so much to learn - some of which is quite daunting, we students of photography require books that are well laid out and allow the reader to build on subjects covered so far. This is such a book. Published by a company whose products include some of those generally excellent photography titles "For Dummies," they really do appear to know the subject.

What I really like is the very beginning of this work. This is called a "Quick Tour" and is designed to get you up and running with your flash unit. Fantastic, after just two pages, we are taking photos with a Nikon Speedlight. And it's a positive learning trail all the way from here as the author covers the widest possible spectrum of flash photography.

Part I includes a complete exposé of the Creative Lighting System (CLS) and setting up the Nikon SB-600 and SB-800 units. Part II allows the photographer to create great photos with full details of; Flash photography basics, wireless flash photography, wireless studio, real-world applications and portraiture. With examples which include anything from portraits, a Hornet and even the head of a small screw, this book gets down to basics and is unlikely to disappoint those who are eager to learn.

NM

Neither One Thing Nor Another
I was looking for something that expanded upon, and made more easily comrehensible,the instruction manuals that came with my SB-800 and macro flash systems. What I wasn't after was an idiot's guide to using flash. Unfortunately, the latter is what I got.
The book would be excellent for someone starting out to use a flash system for the very first time, needing advice and guidance on bounce flash, guide numbers, posing, ideas for subjects etc. I seriously doubt that there are too many people with an SB-600/800 who have those needs.
The book dwells at tedious length on composition and subject ideas. It does give technical detail about using the system, but it is both irritatingly moronic in its assumptions about the reader and lacking in adequate technical detail to do much to expand on the instruction manual.
The book deals, it says, with the Creative Lighting System. In fact, beyond a cursory mention a couple of times, it does not deal with the innovative macro-flash system at all. Users of D70/80/200 cameras with built in Speedlights fare a little better, but the emphasis is definitely on the SB-600/800 guns.
I'd recommend using the money you don't spend on this book on a few sets of batteries. Get used to the instruction manual and go out and experiment. The book is a waste of money for the majority of its supposed target readership.