Since long before I got my new camera, I’ve wanted to take a photography class. After searching around online for a bit, I found PhotoManhattan, a small but reasonably priced photography center that provides introductory photography classes, as well as studio, equipment, and darkroom rentals.

My first class was this past Tuesday. We covered the basics of photography and camera function, and then started into our lessons on exposure. A lot of what she said I had read about elsewhere, but there was a lot that I didn’t know as well. She explained the concept of “stops”, a relative measure of light in a scene. Say two photographs are taken, one at “correct exposure” and the other 1 stop higher. The sensor (or film) in the second photo absorbed twice as much light as the first. For example, if you have a shot, and you want to increase the exposure by one stop, you could double the amount of time the shutter is open, which doubles the amount of light coming in. Shutter speeds that are one stop apart would then be 1/2s, 1/4s, 1/8s, 1/15s (yeah, they round), 1/30s, 1/60, 1/125, etc. Another option is to increase the size of the aperture, which gets a little more complicated, but boils down to changing the aperture by a factor of the square root of two, such as f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, etc.

We also get an assignment each week that we are supposed to complete and bring back to show in class the next week. This first week’s exercise is fairly technical and not very creative, but I’ve posted the pictures anyway, plus a few others just for fun.

The first part is to take 3 pictures of a blank wall, one at 0, one at -2, and one at +2 on the light meter, using shutter speed only.

The second part is to take a photo from inside our apartments, out a window, including some of the wall in the shot, properly exposing the outside. (I think to show us how dark it is inside and light outside.)

The last part of the assignment is to take four pictures of a street corner at night, one each at 1/15s, 1/8s, 1/4s, and 1/2s shutter speed, varying the aperture to keep good exposure.

I also took a few shots, just for fun.