I am gearing up to teach a basics of exposure class tonight. Everytime I think about doing this sort of lesson I think about how easy the concepts are to understand. When I learned in the old film days we had basically 125 and 400 speed black and white film that we learned on. Our lenses were fairly standard f 2.8 to f22 with a few faster lenses that went to 1.8 or 1.4. Shutter speeds maxed out around 1000th of a second. And there were no 1/3 stops or increments of ISO or aperture or shutter speeds. In other words it was a lot easier to learn and teach.
Now I say one stop is the difference between F4 and f5.6 and a hand raises and asks, what about F4.5 or F5?
For me its simple to say oh those are third stops and you fine tune your exposures, but for some new to understanding these things that gets confusing. So now I'm getting nervous that I'll horribly confuse everyone.
The numbers I had to learn totaled maybe 20-25 numbers and settings, now its 60-75.
So today I was jotting down notes and making charts and looking at the great online piece put out by Penn State and at one point as I was charting it out I realized--wait that's backwards. What is easy to me with camera in hand gets super confusing on paper.
And my original idea for an assignment I realized will likely confuse more than help, so around 4 I began to re-asses what I was going to say and hopefully have it down to something feasible and understandable now. We'll know in about an hour when I look at either light bulbs going off or totally confused faces.
I wrote on the top of my presentation, "Metoring--A simple yet confusing ride!" I hope by the end of the night everyone in my small class believes that it is simple enough in concept to then put into practice.
I believe great photography comes from ones own vision but great photographers need at least two major aspects in their oeuvre 1: to work really hard on their craft and on each assignment given and 2: a firm grasp of the basics of exposure so they know how to make their pictures and not just rely on a piece of equipment that may fail them.
Wish my students (and me) luck tonight!
Now I say one stop is the difference between F4 and f5.6 and a hand raises and asks, what about F4.5 or F5?
For me its simple to say oh those are third stops and you fine tune your exposures, but for some new to understanding these things that gets confusing. So now I'm getting nervous that I'll horribly confuse everyone.
The numbers I had to learn totaled maybe 20-25 numbers and settings, now its 60-75.
So today I was jotting down notes and making charts and looking at the great online piece put out by Penn State and at one point as I was charting it out I realized--wait that's backwards. What is easy to me with camera in hand gets super confusing on paper.
And my original idea for an assignment I realized will likely confuse more than help, so around 4 I began to re-asses what I was going to say and hopefully have it down to something feasible and understandable now. We'll know in about an hour when I look at either light bulbs going off or totally confused faces.
I wrote on the top of my presentation, "Metoring--A simple yet confusing ride!" I hope by the end of the night everyone in my small class believes that it is simple enough in concept to then put into practice.
I believe great photography comes from ones own vision but great photographers need at least two major aspects in their oeuvre 1: to work really hard on their craft and on each assignment given and 2: a firm grasp of the basics of exposure so they know how to make their pictures and not just rely on a piece of equipment that may fail them.
Wish my students (and me) luck tonight!