A Minimalist Course in Photography

[photoguy99]

A minor altercation in another thread has inspired me to write this up. This is based on a few ideas from here and there, and a few ideas of my own. I consider it a "first cut" and I think it might be interesting to see what other people have to say, modifications and other ideas.

The idea is: what's the shortest path to sufficient technical mastery of the camera to be able to communicate a rich range of visual ideas. Auto mode doesn't do that, I claim, because a "rich range" needs to be more than the placement of forms and objects into the frame.

Obviously there's room for discussion of what is and is not a minimum requirement for "rich range" but I think it would be really nice if we could generally accept some somewhat grey boundaries.

Note that, while I oppose the dogmatic use of Manual Mode, this course is based on it. It seems the shortest path, and eliminates a lot of discussion of metering comma what does it really mean and exposure compensation etc etc.

Without further ado, here goes:

Step 1.

Set your camera to Manual Mode, and figure out where the meter is in the display. Figure out when the meter is "zeroed" or whatever, indicating "correct exposure" and get some practice twiddling dials to make it do that. You should work out how to adjust these three things: Shutter Speed, Aperture, ISO. Don't worry about what they ARE, just learn how to change them, and see what the meter does.

In fact, don't worry about what any of it actually means. Just wave the camera around, adjust things to "zero the meter" whatever that means. You're just getting familiar with controls.

Step 2.

This is in three parts. You will take 5 pictures in each part.

2a: find someplace where there are objects in motion. Cars or people passing. Running water, perhaps. Point the camera such that objects will go past it from time to time. Set the SHUTTER speed to 1/30 and then zero the meter with the two other controls. If you can't zero the meter, pick another shutter speed until you can, but let's assume you picked 1/30.

Take a picture.

Now without making any other changes, take the same picture at 4 more shutter speeds, two on each side of 1/30. DO NOT worry about the meter. Let the meter go. Move the shutter speed a click or two one way. Take a picture. Another couple clicks. Take a picture. Go back to the middle and go the other way now for two more photos.

Look at the pictures. The brighter ones should be blurrier, and brighter. The darker ones are sharper and darker. What's blurry? What's not?

2b. Same experiment, but you're adjusting APERTURE. Instead of moving objects, find somewhere where there are nearer objects, and farther objects. Set the aperture to about f/8.0 (but anything will do, as long as you can go up and down from the setting. Zero the meter and take a picture. Change the aperture several clicks one way, and then several more. Go back to the middle and go several clicks the other way, and then several more. Let the meter do what it will, and leave the other controls alone.

As an added tweak here, it might be best to set the lens on Manual focus. Focus as best you can and then leave it alone. The put it back to Autofocus, if such a thing exists on your camera.

Look at the pictures. Some will be darker, some brighter. More things in the frame will be sharp in the darker ones, and fewer things in the brighter one.

2c. Same experiment, but adjust ISO. Your location should ideally be colorful and have quite a bit of detail. For some reason people always use bookshelves for this one. Start with an ISO of 800, zero the meter, take a picture. Go one click down, then another. Back to 800, one click up, then another.

The brighter ones will, probably, be fuzzier and grainier/noisier. The darker ones less so.

Step 3.

You now have 15 pictures which tell you pretty much everything there is to know about shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Study them. Think about it.

Go repeat the experiment, if you like. Did you use cars for 2a? Try it with people. Try moving the camera. Did you use a tabletop for the near/far in 2b? Use a landscape instead. Did you do it in daylight in 2c? Try it indoors.

Study the pictures.

There's an afternoon used up. If you're new to this, you're going to want to pull these photos out from time to time and stare at them, or re-do the experiments from time to time, and stare at the results, until it's just second nature what the actual visual effects are.

A final tip: all these effects combine in the obvious ways. For example, changing the shutter speed one way makes the picture too bright, but changing the aperture the other way will darken it back down, and you will get BOTH of the visual effects of the shutter speed change and the aperture change.

Whatever shutter speed and aperture even are. Who cares?

----

Probably something on getting into a useful AF mode would be good, but that's pretty camera specific, isn't it? I don't trust modern AF systems to do the right thing if left alone, but I am possibly just a curmudgeon.

A case can be made that at least an approximate understanding of white balance ought to be in even a minimalist toolkit. What's a good short path to that? On the other hand, AWB's pretty good.

A stronger case can be made that an understanding of the fundamentals of flash photography ought to be in there too. Anyone care to devise a 2-hour program that gets your foot in the door?

 

[photoguy99]

I'm vaguely surprised that nobody's taken a crack at this. In any sense of the phrase.

 

[Waldo32487]

I really like the way this is laid out.

I'm rather new to the photography game and will def give this a shot!

 

[Gary A.]

This would somewhat work if you had a mentor/teacher supervising and providing feedback. I think a neophyte to photography, if like to their own devices, would be as confused as they would be informed/enlightened. Not bringing metering and expanding explanations into the equation makes this tutorial open for failure. But it is a good format for learning where the controls are on the camera and how to adjust them, It just doesn't touch on any of the why. (i.e. Why even shoot manual when in auto all my images will look nice?)

The interrelationships between ISO, shutter speed, aperture and the meter are complex. The moment you open one door, another door is opened in a circular manner. It takes time and repetition to get through all the doors and reach a level of understanding.

In your above tutorial you have failed to mentioned metering and how metering works. The meter is the hub to all the controls, without a basic understanding of metering then learning that the controls will make an image darker or brighter, blurry or well defined, is cursory at best. You need to provide the neophyte with greater information other than 15 images with only a self contained visual explanation of the differences.

 

[photoguy99]

Well, the thesis of the tutorial is that how metering works is an irrelevant detail, basically.

I know what all this stuff is, the meter, metering, histograms, shutter speed, and on and on. I don't see how knowing what a shutter is and how it works has anything to do with photography. It answers a few 'but why?' questions, but doesn't seem to actually help much.

Sometimes details let you deduce important consequences on your own. That doesn't seem to me to be the case with basic camera controls.

 

[WayneF]

If you cannot be bothered to explain anything about the first fundamentals, it seems more honest to just advise any listeners to use a little compact camera or phone, and not worry with it. By your reasoning, Auto works pretty well, sometimes.

 

[photoguy99]

What? That makes absolutely no sense, Wayne. My little course is 100% about showing you why Auto isn't sufficient.

I simply elided irrelevant details.

 

[WayneF]

When Auto is not sufficient, we sure better understand a few basic principles to choose something else. Wishful thinking is not a good solution. Sorry to be so unimpressed.

Start with Petersons Understanding Exposure book, the best $15 a beginner can spend on photography. Very good chance it is already in your local public library.

 

[photoguy99]

Just to expand on the concept of irrelevant detail.

Details can be very useful. I fix software for a living. Huge piles of unrelated detail are a necessary component of my work. I need to know how this thing works, I need to know how various bits and pieces work, in order to isolate the problem and in order to fix it in such a way as to not break the overall functioning of the application.

In Calculus, you really need to know what a derivative is, not merely the rote procedures for calculating them. The rote procedures are error prone, knowing some details lets you sanity-check your answers. Knowing detail is necessary to understand the applications of derivatives to real-world problems, and so on.

Details are useful when they help you fill in information on your own, generally.

Knowing how a meter works in a camera does not seem, to me, to have any of these properties. It boils down to "when the needle is over there, the picture is bright, when it's over there, it's dark. When it's in the middle, the picture is juuuust right.' or something like that. Knowing any more than that doesn't seem to lead to anything, as far as I can tell. I could be persuaded, of course.

Knowing how the shutter actually works and what it is is similarly irrelevant. If you do know that stuff, and have some other knowledge, you can deduce the visual effects of various shutter speeds, to be sure. But you can figure those out by experiment, and the abstract knowledge isn't useful without the experience to back it up anyways. So you need to do the experiment anyways. Why bother with the abstract knowledge? Does it lead to anywhere else? What else does knowing about shutters do for me?

There's flash sync speed, sure. Which you can either explain with a lengthy discussion of front and rear curtains, moving slits, etc, or you can say "Flash doesn't work well above sync speed unless you use HSS" and get to the same place without a lot of fussing.

 

[photoguy99]

It's pretty obvious you haven't read the OP, Wayne.

When Auto is not sufficient, we sure better understand a few basic principles to choose something else. Wishful thinking is not a good solution. Sorry to be so unimpressed.

Aaand if you'd actually read the original post, which you obviously have not, you'd know that it covers "a few basic principles" just as you suggest.

So we agree! I'm so pleased!

 

[vintagesnaps]

This is sarcasm, right? Or a spoof of how 'easy' it is to become 'a photographer', or tongue in cheek, or whatever you'd want to call it... isn't it??

At least that's what occurred to me in step #1 when I got to the part about waving the camera around. Otherwise I'm not sure what you're going for with this. I don't think this is how I'd help someone learn how to use a camera, and I don't think there is a short path to becoming proficient as a photographer.

And I don't know if I want to know what thread prompted this (but I'm curious now).

 

[photoguy99]

It is not sarcasm. Camera-using is easy, and I think people spend FAR too much time mucking about with technical details that just don't matter.

Photography, well, that's kind of hard.

 

[Designer]

photoguy99, for whom is this written? Have you tried it out on anyone personally? What was the result?

 

[photoguy99]

It's written for the neophyte who doesn't know anything, but just bought a DSLR or similar, and has muddled through the manual a bit and is pretty confused.

I don't know any neophytes, so I haven't tried it out on anyone.

People are doing *something* like this out there, though, because they're teaching kids who have never touched a camera to shoot and shoot well in a matter of hours. I don't know what they're actually doing, this is just my best guess at it.

I'm totally interested in feedback, but nobody so far seems to have much beyond "well, that's just stupid" (which, sadly, is pretty much what I expected).

 

[WayneF]

There's flash sync speed, sure. Which you can either explain with a lengthy discussion of front and rear curtains, moving slits, etc, or you can say "Flash doesn't work well above sync speed unless you use HSS" and get to the same place without a lot of fussing.

But you didnt say that... you didn't say anything about anything. HSS is not beginner material, but HSS does NOT get to the same place. Many instances when 1/4000 second shutter cannot stop motion like a speedlight can. And the possible FP distortion when it tries. And that HSS running on 20% power often cannot reach the subject distance that speedlights can. Details are what it is all about. Knowing how to do it is important... called skill. Ability to predict results.

Knowing basics, like how shutter speed affects motion blur, and how aperture affects depth of field and diffraction, and ISO affects noise, etc... and most importantly, how it all combines and compensates, and concepts of equivalent exposure (and that HSS does equivalent exposures too)... these are details that are fundamentally important to know and use.

If we are trying to Not learn anything, then the automatic compact camera has advantages (for us).

Sorry, this notion is too dumb to discuss, I'm out of here.