New exposure concept? Looking for your valued feedback!

[Designer]

Next week we tackle composition.

 

[photo1x1.com]

In my experience there is little knowledge of even the basic things most learned at school, 5 years after they left school. So of course I could create a scientifically correct chart with all the info starting with photons and going all the way to A/D conversion. But that´s exactly what is intimidating so many people when it comes to photography. I want to show them how easy it is to create great images. Yet many people have issues understanding what causes image brightness. I want to pave their way to easier get there rather than being scientifically correct.

I applaud your initiative and effort at trying to make photography more easily accessible to everyone, and I do agree that some aspects of the technology are quite complicated, therefore any new approach that succeeds in breaking it down and making it more understandable is to be sincerely appreciated.

You may consider me rather slow, but I don't understand what you're trying to make easier. Is it the "exposure triangle" concept ?, or perhaps simply trying to introduce some new rules of thumb?, or are you trying to teach the relationship of aperture and shutter speed to something that is yet to be introduced?

You don't like my suggestion to show them how to use the fantastic technology that they hold in their hands, but for some reason you think you have to make it more complicated. Who really wants/needs it to be more complicated? How is making it more complicated going to help newbies create great photography? How is learning the relationships between the mechanical/electronic controls of the camera going to help a novice out in the real world?

Thanks, Designer.
I´m doing this because I see that people are having difficulties. I read a lot in facebook groups and have people send me questions and ask me questions in person. It is rather easy for people to get the hang of what shutter speed and aperture do to their image in regard to freeze/blur motion and increase/decrease depth of focus. But only when they view at it individually. Yet they often ask: why are my images so noisy, or why are they blurred when I was shooting with a smaller aperture to have more of the scene in focus. Sometimes people refer them to the exposure triangle and then I read many comments below that people are not understanding the exposure triangle.
Well, the exposure triangle isn´t something that can be understood - it just lists three components that can change the brightness of an image - but it doesn´t show the correlation between them and wouldn´t answer any of the above questions.
I am a big fan of mnemonics. So I long thought about a model that could help people understand. But because of the logarithmic nature of these components, it is not really easy.
I don´t want to leave out ISO of the equation, even though it is not part of exposure, because so many people have difficulties understanding that and I think nobody can deny that there is a correlation between image brightness and ISO - I mentioned that ISO is technically not part of exposure more than once in my infograph. And I know that I could call the headline camera exposure bars rather than exposure bars. Maybe I even should.
I did have quite some success explaining the thing to people the way I did in the infograph. I also asked some beginners that keep asking me questions for their true feedback and showed them the infograph. So far the feedback was amazing. I am aware though that many people just want to be polite. That´s why I was posting here. I know that people here give great honest feedback - which I do highly value.
Maybe that sheds a bit of light on the reason why I seem a bit stubborn.

 

[photo1x1.com]

No worries, Tim. I do get your point. But for me, this is somewhat philosophical.
Do you rather like the approach to enable a minority of probably highly intellectual people to easier progress beyond what they learn in the beginning?
Or do you see that as intimidating a majority that likes to dive into photography, learn how to take decent pics and "understand" the basics in a way that they can easily create images with a correct brightness? I´m trying to avoid exposure as much as I can, but since it is such a well-established term, I have to use it at times.
The afore mentioned minority sure is clever enough to easily unlearn some parts - or add additional info. Most of these people also don´t usually need any sort of cheat sheets. They comprehend faster and don´t need any kind of mnemonics to keep what they learn.
My approach is to make many people enjoy photography and delivering info that paves their path to becoming better pretty quick.

I don't see the conflict between the two, seriously. Neither do I see a distinction between minority/majority and intellectual/average.

The point I'm continually making is that exposure is about producing consistent tones on the image (correct brightness). If you reduce it to it's simplest then that is what it is. Like an artist learns to make consistent marks on paper so a photographer does it on their media.

Exposure is about controlling light coming into the camera so it's consistent on the sensor. The whole camera and it's metering system is calibrated and geared around mid grey and reproducing that tone accurately. I don't see why you have to invent another system that doesn't explain this. It is the one constant that's known and displayed as the *exposure setting*. Once you understand the base anchor point the effects of variation are easier to understand. You don't need to explain it in terms of mid grey, you can substitute *suggested exposure*, *correct brightness*, or many similar terms if you like.

Cameras are so highly automated these days that you can rely on them to produce consistent images. You don't need a diagram of how to do this, the camera does it for you. All the beginner needs to be able to visualise is the relationship between shutter speed and aperture and how each abstracts the image, (as per your diagram), and separately how the level of ambient light affects this choice and how ISO compensates and allows you different combinations of shutter speed and aperture. Let the beginner form their own system of logic to explain it, it's essentially how they gain understanding.

There is no single simplified diagram that expresses the relationships in any *absolute* form, (references exact camera settings), or fully explains the simple relationships between them. Your problem is not that you don't illustrate the effects well but that you try to unify them into a single diagram. You must mis-represent the relationships to achieve your diagram, so what point is the diagram other than to mislead. And so beginners spend hours arguing over insignificant definitions of words on DPreview rather than actually getting out and taking photographs with a simple understanding of the basics. How they form their own understanding of the relationships will be far more stable with this experience.

What you will end up with teaching the relationships is a logical construct that they will find hard to relate to the actual photographs they take because it never fitted perfectly into your diagram in the first place.

I know I have to seem quite stubborn (see my reply above).
I promise I highly value all your inputs. I will try to evaluate your feedbacks and see how people will react when I try to explain it "your way". In the end what I want is make people understand. I don´t really care what way I have to go.
So thanks again .

 

[Tim Tucker 2]

I know I have to seem quite stubborn (see my reply above).
I promise I highly value all your inputs. I will try to evaluate your feedbacks and see how people will react when I try to explain it "your way". In the end what I want is make people understand. I don´t really care what way I have to go.
So thanks again .

No worries, and you don't seem that stubborn really. What I'm seeing is something different and I'll try and explain it. There is normally a block on our learning and it's caused by an idea or assumption that we just can't see beyond. You are trying to explain exposure in a way that makes sense to you. You assume that I'm doing the same, that I'm trying to give you the model that makes sense to me. I'm not.

As John Sloan said: "I don't want to teach you my opinions, but if you could get hold of my point of view I don't think it will hurt you."

What I see here: You are trying to construct a simple visual model of logic so people can understand exposure. But what you're doing is satisfying your own *left brain* need for there to be a simple logical model.
Your students are asking you *why?*.
In asking *why?* they learn, in trying to avoid the question you prevent that learning.

My image is too dark, I look at the chart and see I need to increase the length of my bar in the chart. But by how much? How does the auto exposure that my camera tells me to use relate to the length of this bar? Why is it sometimes wrong?

Your desire for there to be a simple diagram is your *left brain* logic. As I said before, allow them to create their own that suits the way they think, not leave them to adapt to the way you think. Just a simple key, one constant fixed point that links the brightness of the scene to the brightness of the image. Not a map of variables in constant motion that add up to a variable total they can neither see nor relate to.