Today I Made Myself Learn Something

It is almost physically impossible for me to wrap my attention span around anything having to do with the following topics, which fall into a category I refer to as Snoozefest:

• The Civil War
• Westerns
• US Presidents
• Sports
• The Matrix and its sequels

Now. After nine months of shooting with my Nikon D40, I haven't bothered to learn the basic manual settings. I confess. I've been pretending. And it's all because instruction manuals for digital cameras make me feel the same way that I've felt every time I tried to watch The Matrix -- lulled off to sleepy town by pseudo technical geek-speak uttered in soft, serious tones by Keanu Reeves. Try to explain the concept of "exposure" to me and all I will hear is: "Jibber-jabber jibber-jabber jibber-jabber. Jibber-jabber jibber-jabber, Mr. Anderson. Jibber-jabber, jibber-jabber jibber-jabber. There is no spoon." Yes. It's true. I didn't get it. Exposure was a mystery wrapped in a riddle.

Until today. Today I came across this lesson (the first in a series) from Digital Photography School.

Exposure is the AMOUNT OF LIGHT (Aperture) captured over a SPECIFIC AMOUNT OF TIME (Shutter Speed) and recorded onto a digital sensor (or onto film).

And look -- I even memorized the fstops: 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, 45, 64, 90!!!

And finally:

The lower the fstop, the more light, the more shallow the DOF.
The higher the fstop, the less light, the deeper the DOF.

Bring on the next lesson, Natalie Norton. I get it now. I really do. So thank you.

Comments

[Rachel]

Your posts are always inspired and entertaining. And I love Natalie Norton's blog too.

[Kasey]

I have decided that all that f-stop stuff is something I should learn too. I think I knew it once, but that was a long time ago. Oh, and for me it's Star Wars. All the laser-y sounding shooting is like a lullaby for me and my eyes simply can't stay open.

Found you from the Small Notebook- looks like a fun blog, I'm excited to read more!