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This image, my friends, is an example of first learn the rules, then learn to break them.

Relax. Today is a fun day, lesson is a review, assignment is relevant to a festive American holiday.

Going back to last lesson’s extra credit question: Originally, our goal wasn’t to change the exposure ratio by lightening or darkening the image; the goal was to change the aperture in order to change the amount of detail in the background behind our subject so that I could show you examples of why you might choose to shoot wide open and why you might choose to shoot stopped down. In other words, exercise some control over the image we’re shooting to render us photographers rather than people holding glorified point-and-shoots. Remember when I talked in aperture about learning the whole stops so that you can effortlessly jump from stop to stop in your head? That’s what I was challenging you to do with this question. The problem I ran into, that you can see clearly in the close-up crop of each image, is that I used a shutter speed that was too slow for a handheld shot; it caused the image to blur. And for our purposes, correct exposure is not too bright, not too dark, in focus and generally, technically correct. Image blur due to camera shake is operator error.

Notice I called it extra credit and not an assignment — that’s because you’re going to have to jump into ISO and/or shutter speed, and we haven’t fully covered those yet! (Never hurts to get your mind thinking in the direction you want to go, though.)

So back to the question: if we increase our shutter speed, the inherent effect is that we’ve decreased the amount of light coming in by one-half. The way to make up for that loss of light, keeping all things equal, is to increase the amount of light by one stop with ISO or aperture. So if we’re at f/16 and 1/30 and ISO 400, and we want to move our shutter speed to a minimum of 1/60 because our focal length is roughly a normal lens (remember, 50mm lens needs 1/50 shutter speed or faster), we have two options: open our aperture (or lens opening, think circles) one stop or bump up our ISO one stop higher; both would let in twice the amount of light to compensate for the shutter speed’s loss.

In this example, f/16 at 1/30 ISO 400 is the same as f/11 at 1/60 ISO 400 is the same as f/16 at 1/60 ISO 800.

Q: Whoa! I have no idea what you just said. Come again?

A: That’s okay. Hardly anybody gets that the first time.

What I need for you to walk away with from this post is the crux of another huge point that has nothing to do with fractions: there is no one single exposure possibility to make a particular image. Think about that. I’m going to say it again, differently, to hammer my point home: there are lots of different exposure combinations possible for every single image you take. Aperture showed you two extremes of possibility, shooting wide open and shooting stopped down; shutter speed (tomorrow? Depends on how fun tonight is, I suppose.) will show you two more extremes of possibility, freezing and blurring motion.

If I handed a beginner my camera in manual mode and asked the beginner to pick the settings to shoot a portrait of me, a beginner would search his or her brain for the “correct” exposure. That kind of thinking gets beginners into trouble. If you’ve been a beginner for a long time, you need to do an about-face; turn yourself around and slowly start backing out of the dark, optionless void of glorified Xerox machine photography. There is no “correct” exposure. There’s only the exposure the photographer chooses to make the image he or she wants.

Remember this:

Q: What kind of camera should I buy?

A: What kind of pictures are you looking to take?

I understand where it comes from: we’ve all taken photos that were technically incorrect. Perhaps we missed an important shot that can never be re-created — a baby’s first steps or a graduate accepting a degree, and that makes us fear photographic mistakes. We have a natural desire to learn how NOT to mess up a photo like that again.

Technology is improving and we want to buy a camera that will save us from ourselves, take the picture without making mistakes. See “there is no magic pill…” in the introduction to this crash course. You can’t buy the camera that will take the pictures you want. You have to learn how to take those pictures with your camera.

Q: You’re wrong! I CAN buy a camera that will take pictures on program mode better than I can take them in manual! Technology IS there! I know for a fact, because my brother has one and he does it all the time! His pictures of my nephew are WAY better than my pictures of my son. I just want what he has, so I thought I’d ask you, too, and get a second opinion.

A: Think about the question you originally asked me, the one I replied to with a link that landed you here. The questions I get are, “The moms using 28mm lenses at gymnastics meets are getting better pictures than I am with my 200 mm zoom — and my lens was more expensive and gets me way closer to my daughter than theirs does. WHY???”

See “camera shake/blur” in aperture.

Any of us can buy package of ballpoint pens at Target; it’s what we write with those pens that is uniquely ours.

It’s easy to cry “but technology!” now because crying “egads! I get it! I learned photography!” requires a lot of work. (A LOT. And a lot of knowledge. Education. And a hefty investment in gear. So the answer is no, I won’t shoot your sister’s wedding for 500 bucks! But I digress.) It’s easier to buy the camera and hope for the best than to keep reading and learn — finally, truly learn — how to use your camera.

For those of you who want better pictures, for those of you who want to make a smart purchase, for those of you who asked me why, keep reading.

Erase from your brain this notion of making a “correct” exposure. Correct exposure. Remember, we agreed for the sake of argument that you’re looking to create images that are first and foremost in-focus and not too bright (overexposed) or too dark (underexposed.) That’s why we made this agreement. Creativity will come later. Creativity comes once you’ve learned the rules. Sometimes creativity comes as a fluke, a mistake that actually looked pretty cool.

First learn the rules; then learn to break them.

Today is just review. Look over the exposure flowchart and get your brain thinking like a photographer. What kind of picture are you trying to take? Are you trying to show action? Freeze action? Isolate your subject from the background for a portrait? Look over the ways to make that happen. The more you see it, the sooner it will become second nature.

And then go enjoy the celebration — Happy birthday, America!!!

 

 

 

 

 

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