Customer Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic Strobist Style Lighting Book
Comment: A book based on the Strobist practices of lighting professionally with strobes on location.
I am 3/4 the way through this book and am loving it. He really breaks it down and explains everything well.
What I like the best is that he tells you what strobes, reflectors, scrims, etc he used for each shot as well as a drawn out diagram explaining placement and power settings.
It is really helpful to me as a newbie to lighting and I am enjoying it more than McNally's book , simply based on the teaching aspect of it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mimalist Lighting - Just what the Chiropractor Ordered!
Comment: If you are looking for a book on super trendy hard lit portable flash photography this book is probably not what you are looking for, but if you are looking to to make bankable portraits without breaking your back or the bank than Kirk Tucks Minimalist Lighting is just the book for you.
The first 88 pages are dedicated to giving you a solid understanding of how to incorporate these little Hot Shoe wonders into your shooting workflow by getting them off of the camera and getting them into a softbox, shooting through a light panel and all sorts of other small flash trickery. Other topics include chapters on A History of Photographic Lighting, Accessories, Modifiers and even a very thorough chapter on powering your portable flashes.
The balance of the book is filled out with Case Studies of Kirks work over the years. Each page showcasing a different client and how the shot was achieved. Each study is complete with lighting diagram. This is the stuff I really love and I'm hoping Kirk's follow up effort to Minimalist Lighting includes many more of these Case Studies.
My only real critique of Minimalist Lighting is that being a Canon Shooter, I wish the Canon Speedlite system was better represented. Kirk is a Nikon and Fuji shooter and most of the examples, including an entire section on using Nikon SB 600 and 800 flashes in remote mode were illustrated using the Nikon system. I wish there would have been comparable section showcasing Canon gear. Though not a deal breaker for me since both systems are very similar, it just would have been a nicety for beginners just starting out with Canon equipment.
All in all I think "Minimalist Lighting - Professional Techniques for Location Photography" is a great addition to every photographers bookshelf, either seasoned shooter who wants to learn how to lighten their load while still capturing top quality images or the Weekend Warrior, who is just getting into lighting and doesn't have a 5k dollar budget for a traditional strobe lighting setup. I'm already looking forward to Kirks next book!
Cris Mitchell
Publisher
ProPhotoResource.com
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Should have been called "Portable Lighting"
Comment: I really wanted to like this book. It has a very good mix of background material and informative case studies. However, the very first case study uses FIVE STROBES and two softboxes, triggered wirelessly. Certainly, the kit's small enough to carried by a single person, but it's also several thousand dollars of lighting gear that can hardly be called minimalist. Other case study examples are similar.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Intriguing and Practical
Comment: As the title suggests, the scope of this book is how to produce images without the burdensome lighting equipment and without sacrificing quality. The concept in itself drew me into this book as I found it hard to put down. Kirk Tuck always kept my interest as the ability and advantage of creating more with less is revealed. Advancements in camera technology and the clever use of flashes are two such examples of how this is achieved. An equipment overview, lighting set ups, techniques and case studies make this a well rounded book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Minimalist Information
Comment: A better name for this book might have been "integrating new flash systems". The main thrust of the book is how to use multi-light flash systems like Nikon's CLS (and Canon's comparable system, the author says) to replace the heavier studio lighting equipment that some photographers take on location shoots.
After brief discussions of the history of artificial photographic lights, and the nature of light, the author begins an explanation of four systems for triggering multiple speedlights: radio slave; built in wireless systems; optical slaves; and off-camera cords. He then describes a number of pieces of equipment useful to setting up multi-flash systems, including speedlights, triggers; light stands, adapters, and gels for altering white balance. He illustrates how to use this equipment, including umbrellas, reflectors and softboxes to take portraits. He finishes up with a series of examples, showing how and why he placed and controlled his lights.
All of this information is useful, and occasionally I learned a few tricks (for the Nikon CLS system, using the SU 800 rather than an SB 800 avoids the pre-flashes that occasionally make people squint). But more often then not, I wanted more information. Some of it I found elsewhere (what do you call that thing that holds a reflector on a light stand?-a reflector holder- duh!) But other unanswered questions were more difficult. What mode should one shoot in for best results? Why did the author use manual flash adjustments rather then TTL (through-the-lens)? How did he decide which flashes to put on which channels?
Another problem I found was that all of the pictures were portraits, and all of the portraits had the same look. I suppose for a professional whose job is to deliver a certain standard look for a report or magazine, this is fine, but suppose you are looking for something more artsy. An answer might be that it's up to the individual photographer to experiment, once he gets an understanding of the system, but I had hoped for more.
The author is right that modern flash systems offer photographers incredible opportunities and convenience that they never had before. Right now there seems to be a dearth of materials on how to get the most from these systems. The author added a little to the knowledge base, but there is room for a lot more information.
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