1.29.2009 Shooting Assignment #1

You might notice I am not including materials from class or the actual assignments here. That is because all of that information is Tom's proprietary teaching material. He's worked hard to develop his lesson plans, examples, and handouts and I am going to respect his intellectual property.

I will tell about the general info and pass on a few tips he might give out. For example, he gives a good general rule of thumb for when you need to use a tripod. If you are shooting at a shutter speed that is less than the inverse of your focal length, use a tripod. Well, yes, that involves math but it's not hard. If I'm using my 18-55 mm lens at 55mm, then the inverse would be 1/55*. So if I use a shutter speed SLOWER than around 1/60th of a second, I should use a tripod.

*Technically speaking, Nikons have a crop factor of 1.5 so the focal length equivalent would actually be ~ 82.5mm. But that's another discussion!

The assignment generally had us practice manipulation of exposure, speed, and depth of field. Again, the focus here is on mechanics of the camera and nothing to do with composure or anything artsy like that yet. So these are boring pics.

Exposure bracketing:
Shutter speed control, notice the pendulum.Depth of field. Notice the potted plant in the far corner of the room in both pictures.