Assignment #1

• Shoot a properly exposed picture (manual mode) of a normal scene, not a back lit, not a front lit, not an overly light or excessively dark subject. I don’t care what aperture or what shutter speed, just properly exposed. Take notes.
  
• Shoot a series of five shots showing purposeful overexposures and underexposures (-2, and -1 stop, normal, +1 stop and +2 stop). Pick a shutter speed that places your aperture in the mid-point of your available apertures, say f 8. Then hold your shutter speed constant and change your apertures to get the over and under exposure your want. This is called bracketing. You can do this with shutter speeds or a combination of shutter speeds and apertures changes. Remember each full aperture change equals 1 stop. Shoot these pictures as soon as possible.
  Note, do the aperture or ss change by actually changing the value of the aperture or ss, not by watching the meter move. The goal is to learn your aperture and ss values.
  
• Find a subject that is in motion, such as a moving car, child on a bicycle, or running water. Running water from your kitchen sink or outside garden hose does not work very well. Look for naturally flowing water. Stop, or freeze the movement of the water with shutter speed control (running water will be frozen at any shutter speed at or faster than 1/60 second. You don’t have to use the fastest shutter speed, just fast enough. Remember to keep a happy meter by adjusting your aperture.
  
• Now blur the movement with shutter speed control. Use a relatively slow shutter speed. Use shutter speeds starting at 1/15 sec to as slow as you can go. The limit will be set my how bright the ambient light is. When the light is bright, it is difficult or impossible to use really long shutter speeds, such as ½ or one second, but go as slow as you can while keeping your meter happy. You will find that you get to use the longest shutter possible when you set the aperture to the smallest you have, such as f22. You will need to hold the camera absolutely still for these shots. Use your tripod if you have one.
  
• Show shallow depth of field (such as near subject in focus and background out of focus) with aperture control. Use large apertures (large hole, small numerical value, such as f2). Get really close to your near subject and also have your far subject (viewable in the same frame) fairly far away, greater than 10-15 ft.
  
• Show great depth of field (near and far all in focus) with aperture control. Use small apertures (small hole, large numerical value, such as f16 or f22)