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Set Lighting Technician's Handbook: Film Lighting Equipment, Practice, and Electrical Distribution

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Comprehensive. Detailed. Practical. Set Lighting Technician's Handbook, Fourth Edition, is a friendly, hands-on manual covering the day-to-day practices, equipment, and tricks of the trade essential to anyone doing motion picture lighting, including the lamp operator, rigging crew, gaffer, best boy, or director of photography. This handbook offers a wealth of practical technical information, useful techniques, as well as aesthetic discussions.

The Set Lighting Technician's Handbook focuses on what is important when working on-set: trouble-shooting, teamwork, set protocol, and safety. It describes tricks and techniques for operating a vast array of lighting equipment including LEDs, xenons, camera synchronous strobes, black lights, underwater units, lighting effects units, and many others. Since its first edition, this handy on-set reference continues to be widely adopted as a training and reference manual by union training programs as well as top university film production programs.

New to the fourth edition:
* Detailed information on LED technology and gear
* Harmonized with union safety and training procedures
* All the latest and greatest DMX gadgets, including remote control systems
* Many new and useful lights and how to use them and troubleshoot them.
* New additions to the arsenal of electrical distribution equipment that make our sets safer and easier to power.
* More rigging tricks and techniques.
* the same friendly, easy to read style that has made this book so popular.

* An indispensable on-the-job reference for tens of thousands of film lighting technicians
* Includes professional-level procedures that save time and promote safety and efficiency
* Written by a leading gaffer and director of photography

1101 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

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Harry Box

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Profile Image for Sita.
167 reviews18 followers
February 22, 2008
I had to read this book for class. It was actually quite well written with some anecdotes thrown in to make it livelier. My aspiring DP friend practically made this book his bible and I had to prized it off his deathly grip. I just gave it 2 stars because I just use it as reference. DP friend would probably gave it a 5 since he actually carry it with him everywhere.
Profile Image for Jonathan Clement.
9 reviews6 followers
August 11, 2019
due to the way its written its not memorable but knowledge heavy great reference book
Profile Image for Julius B.
21 reviews1 follower
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March 19, 2025
lol took me forever as it’s a giant book but on spring break rn and managed to finish it all. What a fantastic read, very insightful, learned so much useful knowledge!
6 reviews3 followers
August 26, 2007
If you work as a grip, electric or cinematographer this is required reading. Exhaustive reference book for equipment specs, knots, protocol and anything else you might encounter or need to know on set. Of no interest to anyone else.
Profile Image for Kellista.
Author 1 book5 followers
December 27, 2008
Amazing and so useful...a must have for anyone interested in set lighting. Gives many diagrams, tricks of the trade, calculations, etc.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews

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