Continuous Light (as opposed to electronic flash light)
I'm going to try to cover this first, because it's easiest to learn from. Daylight is continuous. I'll look for some good web sites covering this. I may repeat some already cited as they cover the topic.
I'll also cover "Practicals", a term used by British Cinematographers to describe the lights you find in homes, shops and in some industry. These are lights that are removable from their fixtures. Like the light bulb or lamp you find in a desk lamp. For our purposes, the source can be in or out of frame for now. But, by definition, in frame.
Pay attention to the lights around you and in the places you visit. Note the color temperature and quality of the light. There are standards in lighting. I'm sure they may vary with the country, but, overhead lighting in schools and offices are usually of a prescribed brightness and overhead distance. Same for factories and assembly areas. Hospitals have special lighting requirements.
You can change the "quality" of the light with "modifiers". This applies to almost any light, from daylight sun to the light coming from a flashlight (torch). If you visit a lighting store or hardware store, you will find many kinds of lamps. I'll use the word "lamp" to denote the bulb and light to talk about the quality of the stuff the lamp emits.
Practicals are great, because they can be used to change the quality of light coming from a lamp fixture by simply switching out one lamp (light bulb) for another.
I thought this might be one of the last things to cover, but then thought, because they are so inexpensive, and continuous in their output, they would be easy to learn from by experience.
Many photographers, especially those using digital cameras because of their ability to amplify light, carry a sack of practicals when doing location lighting. Changing out room bulbs can completely change the quality and mood of a room's light.
The way I evaluate light quality, aside from brightness, is to look at shadows cast by objects illuminated by the light source. Are they hard, with sharp edges, or soft, with soft edges ..or so soft and filled, like a heavily white clouded sky, with almost no shadow? The other thing I do is study something illuminated by the light source. It can be an object or commonly, the palm of my hand. If you do this often, you can predict the quality of a light source from memory.
Learn about shadows:
https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=2068
The terms apply to any light source that produces the shadow of an object.
Practicals .. No Film School
"Practical lights are, of course, traditionally defined as any light where the source is in frame. "
http://nofilmschool.com/2015/07/pra...actical-lighting-bring-cinematography-to-life
Stanley Kubrick, the master of practicals lighting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_w2wL29KGU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inZ_p-sTV9I
This post isn't complete. I'll edit and add to it as I have time.
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