2009 DLS Week 1 exercises

This exercise is to help you experiment with the Law of Reciprocity as well as hone your understanding of DOF while practicing manual focusing. It is also to get you thinking more about making creative choices - what objects will you choose? Where will you choose to shoot? What time of day will you shoot?

All 3 tasks can be completed in a period of an hour or less - make sure you remember to post them somewhere!

TASK 1
Find a nice bright spot to take a picture - a kitchen, bedroom, or living room floor with lots of natural light would be ideal, or this could be done outside. Set up a series of about 5 similar or identical items in a row, each about 3-4" apart from each other. Be as creative as you like - they could be anything from beer bottles to baby bottles, Hotwheels, walnuts... You could make a train of some sort with your kids. You could put pinecones on the snow. Really, the sky is the limit...

Disable your flash, set your camera to MF, Av, f3.5, ISO 200. (Remember, if you're using a zoom, your zoom may need to be at the widest angle to get to f3.5, and if your lens only goes as low as f4.0 consider using a different lens. Otherwise, set your aperture to f4.0)) Standing at one end of the row, focus on the object closest to you. Take one picture. If it's properly exposed, continue. If not, you will need to adjust the settings on your camera until you get a proper exposure before proceeding with the rest of the task.  

Note how many of the objects are in focus at f3.5, and adjust your aperture one f-stop at a time until almost all the objects are in focus. How many f-stops did it take you? Note the light and what the camera set your shutter speeds at - did you have to deal with camera shake at all? If you had trouble getting pictures with higher f-stops, what would your options be for increasing the shutter speed without altering the depth of field? Hint - law of reciprocity only has 3 parts: light intensity (aperture) sensitivity (film speed) and duration (shutter speed). If you're feeling inspired, try it again by setting the camera on the surface your objects are restin on or on a tripod if you have one. Remeber: you should be using the 2-second (10 on some Canons) delay.  See a sample.

Post 3 images - the one at the WIDEST aperture (shallowest depth of field, small f-stop number), one in the middle, and one at the SMALLEST aperture (deepest septh of field, high f-stop number)

TASK 2
Go outside during the day, set your camera to MF, Av, f3.5, ISO200. Find a straight edge - the fence in your backyard, a swing, a bannister, a sidewalk... Standing in the same spot at one end, manually focus so that you have 3 images with distinctly different focal points along that straight edge. If you're still feeling inspired and want to take your shooting to the street, this would be a really fun one to do in a grocery store in the soup aisle or in the library along the bookshelves! If you really want to challenge yourself, find a table or countertop that has a distinct end - something about 6-8 feet long. Try adjusting your aperture so that the entire length of the edge is in focus, but drops off suddenly at the end so everything beyond the table fades off into Bokeh oblivion...

Post a set of three pictures with the three distinct focal points ("sweet spots").  See a sample.

TASK 3
Gather 5 items to make a still life - a vase, an orange, a placemat, a flower, and a feather; a shoebox, a strainer, a rubber dog bone, a roll of toilet paper, and an origami crane... whatever you can find. Set your camera to M, f4.0, ISO 100, ss 1/60. If the picture tunred out perfectly, great. If it's over- or under-exposed, try adjusting the settings manually (according to the Law of Reciprocity) to correct the exposure.

Post 3 successful pictures with distinctly different settings and include what your camera settings were as well as your own written observations of the different qualities those three images have.

BONUS BOKEH BALLS!

If you've still got Christmas lights up, you can try this exercise to get bokeh balls...

Set your camera to Av, f4.0, ISO 400. Set up something close to you to focus on so the lights will be in the background. (You may need a solid surface and the 2-sec delay!)

I'd love to see what you are coming up with! I strongly recommend using Picasa as both a photo organizer and for very basic editing features. It has an easy upload interface to Picasa web albums as well, for both Mac and PC. Mac users can set up iPhoto to upload images directly to Picasa web albums using the 'uploader' application If you are using flickr or Facebook or another site for online sharing already, no worries. Send me a link to wherever you're uploading whatever you're shooting!

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