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Resources for all the different kinds of lights


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I've been trying to learn everything I can about cinematography for the last 6 months or so, and the biggest hurdle I've been running into is the overwhelming amount of different lights and light accessories available. 

It's all well and good when a tutorial shows me how they lit a scene, but if I have no idea what lights they're using, or why they're using those, I feel lost. 

When I try and go through lists of lights and read up on them, I get overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of options. 

I would love any suggestions of where to start to get a good base knowledge of different lights (and I don't just mean the difference between HMI, tungsten, and LED. I understand that. It's that within those categories there seem to be hundreds of options)

Thanks in advance for the help. This site is an amazing resource. 

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Some books that I've found useful:  "Film Lighting" by Kris Malkiewicz , "Lighting for Cinematography" by David Landau, and "The Set Lighting Technicians Handbook" by Harry Box.  

I would probably rate them in that order for ease of reading too.  "Film Lighting" is very conversational in its approach.  The Landau book takes a more text book approach.  The Harry Box book is really technical guide. It does provide more thorough lists of lights and lighting equipment but it's also the densest read.  

All of them are good resources.  

 
 

 

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