Rating: 
Summary: MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT
Review: Except for the beautiful reproductions of some of the finest Hollywood portraits, the book is a major disappointment. The cover of the book clearly states "classic shots and how to take them," but the authors' feeble attempt at presenting the lighting setups, at least half of which are totally erroneous, is only remotely informative. Christopher Nisperos, a portrait photographer, includes no recreations of any of the images in the book, which is suggestive in itself, and shares no technical information of any substance. There is no discussion of types of lights used by the photographers in any of the discriptions which would have been fascinating and the lighting diagrams suggest working distances for various lights that are at best misleading. All in all the book is a very superficial look at the creation of Hollywood "style" portrais and will prove of only very limited value to the aspiring portrait photographer.
Rating:
Summary: MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT
Review: Except for the beautiful reproductions of some of the finest Hollywood portraits, the book is a major disappointment. The cover of the book clearly states "classic shots and how to take them," but the authors' feeble attempt at presenting the lighting setups, at least half of which are totally erroneous, is only remotely informative. Christopher Nisperos, a portrait photographer, includes no recreations of any of the images in the book, which is suggestive in itself, and shares no technical information of any substance. There is no discussion of types of lights used by the photographers in any of the discriptions which would have been fascinating and the lighting diagrams suggest working distances for various lights that are at best misleading. All in all the book is a very superficial look at the creation of Hollywood "style" portrais and will prove of only very limited value to the aspiring portrait photographer.
Rating: 
Summary: One of those rare books
Review: Finding any information on techniques from the golden era of Hollywood photography is difficult at best--finding this book was like finding a diamond in the rough. It contains just enough information to give most photographers an idea on how to replicate classic Hollywood portraits. The pictures shown through-out are wonderful and give you the inspiration you need, but the information contained doesn't quite go far enough in my opinion. More information on recreating the look and feel with modern day tools, including digital, would have been great.I feel that the book is certainly worth getting if you have knowledge of photography and want to recreate this kind of look in your photos. It was worth every cent for me.
Rating:
Summary: One of those rare books
Review: Finding any information on techniques from the golden era of Hollywood photography is difficult at best--finding this book was like finding a diamond in the rough. It contains just enough information to give most photographers an idea on how to replicate classic Hollywood portraits. The pictures shown through-out are wonderful and give you the inspiration you need, but the information contained doesn't quite go far enough in my opinion. More information on recreating the look and feel with modern day tools, including digital, would have been great. I feel that the book is certainly worth getting if you have knowledge of photography and want to recreate this kind of look in your photos. It was worth every cent for me.
Rating: 
Summary: How to Shoot like the Stars
Review: I was surprised when I recieved this book that it not only had fantastic photographs, but it gave you great detail in how to reproduce the same effect for each photograph. It was rather a nice addition to the fine photography. Stars included are Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren, James Cagney, Elizabeth Taylor, etc. Photographers included are among the best like C.S. Bull, Lazlo Willinger, George Hurrell, and some anonymous photographers who sadly did not get credit during their time. All in All, this is a nice book printed on high quality paper and bounded in soft cover.
Rating: 
Summary: Very little substance
Review: Several portraits of the Kobal collection are presented along with a brief guess as to how each was made, based solely on visual clues within the photograph. Photographers will probably be disappointed in the lack of useful technical data. The lighting diagrams are very vague, even so, some are obviously wrong. If the authors had bothered to recreate the photographs, they might have noticed the errors. However, they seemed satisfied with filling in blank spaces with biographical information about the actors. This seems like a very easy book for the authors to produce.
Rating:
Summary: you will never get tired of this book
Review: Some else worte that the book is not correct, they had never tried to recreate some of the effects. I have personaly tried recreating some of the lighting and all of the photo's came out great without much make up and no touch ups. Also most all of the photo's I took were worth blowing up to a large photo. The book explains lighting, film types, and how it has changed over time. You can reproduce the hollywood portrait look with very little expense.
Rating:
Summary: good book...lousy ending
Review: the book was sufficient enough for me.It gave me great ideas on how to set up the lighting. I wasn't worried about the stops and speeds because that's what photography's all about...your own interpretation.from there on you must experiment;and bracket at the same time. I made use of the lighting I had available be it tungsten or strobe, I learned the setup from this book. The only thing bad was there was no conclusion...just a last page pix of elvis.Overall,it's a great reference book pro or not!
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not really necessary
Review: The photos are excellently reproduced, and the text is well written, but if you've already been digging into Hollywood glamour photography, you probably can figure out lighting setups pretty well without diagrams. The diagrams in this book are good for the most part, although the authors left out a few lighting instruments and included a few that probably should have been omitted. They do sort out some rather confusing lighting rather well, though. If you already have Mark Vieira's book "Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits," you probably don't need this book as a technical guide. However, it does have some nice examples of work by other photogs that you may not have seen.
Rating:
Summary: Disapointed
Review: Thinking this was going to show the authors techniques for recreating the classic look I was sadly mistaken. It does not include any of the authors work, only the work of others and explains how HE thinks they had been shot. As I am no dummy, I could have done this myself, and have from the Hurrell book which has a much better selections of photos and equipment used. I found this book a waste of my money and time. A note to the author, what I was looking for was updated equipment to use, such as tungsten lighting suggestions, wattage's used, etc. It would have been good to include films, along with the characteristics of each. I also noticed his touching upon retouching, nice, but how should it be done, my understanding is they used to use a vibrating table. So all in all a big miss on what is needed to recreate such stunning photos using today's equipment. You are better off buying two Arri tungsten lights, a used large format camera and trying it with pure instinct then wasting money on this book.
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