Meanwhile I got the book Swizl mentioned. I'm only half through but as he wanted to buy the new edition from 2014 I thought I do write about my first impressions. It could take some time till I finish it (other things to do, other stuff to read).
In short: I can't really recommend it (especially not if you already have an older edition).
It's not a bad book by any means. Some 15 years ago I would have highly prized it because back then it was invaluable. Brin certainly knows his business. But all in all it looks as if written in the beginnings of the 2000s, with a few paragraphs put in to modernize it a little bit. So the modern physically based renderers are mentioned in a short paragraph but the main text is clearly about the old fashioned ones, where phong shaders (& cie.) where the most used. The pictures shown also look like they are coming from the early 2000s. It's not said when the first edition was written but my guess would be 2002 – and the bulk of the information given seems to stem from that time period (reading it I got the feeling that Global Illumination was something quite new ...).
For example, in the second half is a chapter about camera matching. It's done by eye. There are references to digital cameras but the techniques used are for film (important stuff like crop factors is not even mentioned, at least not that I have seen it browsing through that chapter).
And the part about the lighting (where specular in the material is explained at length but not that you can't use it anymore in physically based renderers) is not usable in Cheetah's falcon renderer (in the part about lighting HDR is only shown as dome light and is explained somewhere in the latter half of the book).
Another gripe I have with the book, it's just about characters and animation (and it recomends to have lights that are used only to light the character or part of it, not the environment. With that you can get very unrealistic looking lighting). Product shots and stuff are not even mentioned. And especially beginners could get a wrong impression if they try to do in falcon what they learn from this book.
There is still enough content that's valid, but imho not worth the price for the book. I'd still recommend getting a few titles about photography (there are so many approaches and styles), especially about composition, color etc. Of course, it's not always easy to adapt this (new) knowledge to 3d, but it's probably the better approach to try to adapt it with that what's acually available in the 3d-software you use.
The 3d related stuff in this book you can learn from other sources, mostly for free, when (and if) you need it (for example, Cheetah doesn't support all the possibilities for compositing shown here).
@Swizl : Actually I don't really know the differences between the three editions. Could be that some of the stuff I think was already in the first one got in there later on but the important things in the book are imho already in the first edition. The newer parts are not explained well (or mostly not at all, only what they are, but not how to use it). If you still work with Modo I'd recommend Richard Yot's tutorials about rendering (some older ones are for free, but even there a lot of it is still valid and valuable). For C4d or whatever you use are probably some other render-cracks around. Those people can maybe show you a few new tricks; this halfheartedly updated book probably can't (there are better ways to spend your money).
I do wish, though, that the author would write his book anew from scratch, with new examples and so on. It could be great.