The Beginners Questions Area

@DonaldB

Read Iliah's post just before your previous post.

He also says JimKasson gave you the correct answer.

Sigh. I said EV0 is 3 stops down from clipping and thus I'm a bad teacher? As I said before, in addition to whatever qualities are necessary in a teacher, learning requires a student who wants to learn, will listen carefully, and do the homework with care.

This goes both ways. Teachers should also listen to the feedback of students and adapt.

Good move. But it would be even better if the beginners had time to post their question before the answers were given. 😃
I think those articles are better suited for a FAQ than a beginner's forum.

I have answered a lot of newbie questions on a whole other, but also kind of technical, topic for several decades. I've found some things.

1. The answer doesn't only need to be correct. It must also be delivered in a way and a language the newbie can understand. Too many technical terms, of which they need to look up every single one, only discourage them and cause confusion. You aren't talking to your peers, you are talking to someone who basically knows nothing about the topic. You not only need to know your stuff, you need both the ability and the will to deliver your answer in such a way that the newbie can handle it.

2. Newbies often feel stupid. If they run into long answers way beyond their level of understanding for the topic they feel diminished. Loose interest, give up, go to another forum...

3. It's often better to serve newbies small portions that they can handle and feel happy about mastering. Then they soon come back for another serving. After all, isn't that how we all learn new stuff, one bit at the time?

I don't see the point of your example because it is actually supporting what I said.

The teacher's information is correct.

The 100m race could be held in the same playground every time. Therefore, the long term students will know which one to go to and so need no further explanation.

Students recently arrived at the school, just like people new to photography, might need further clarification.

Just because the teacher's information was clear to some students and not clear to other students does not make the information incorrect.

Which of Iliah Borg's sentences are you claiming are not correct?

When asked by a novice photographer, "What does ISO do?", I would begin by saying, "ISO is a setting used to manage the lightness of a photo." I submit that distilled but accurate response is no more difficult to understand than the erroneous, "ISO is a setting that helps set exposure."

If you disagree, I invite you to make your case.

Would you say that to someone shooting only raw? If so, how would you say that ISO manages lightness?

I think the advice given to people shooting JPEG and those shotting raw should be different.

In fairness to Bill he is clearly referring to advice for novices which imo, based on my experience, are very unlikely to be shooting raw straight after putting a camera in their hand for the first time. Bill also said he would begin by saying, "ISO is a setting used to manage the lightness of a photo.". He didn't say that would be the only advice. The advice Bill said he would give is appropriate imo.

Someone shooting raw is much more likely to be beyond the novice stage but can obviously still be a beginner and yes in that case the advice for "What does ISO do" should be different.

And this is where it can get "messy" in public forums depending on the interests and level of comprehension of the beginner the advice is being given to.

Just out of curiosity, what advice would you give to the question "What does ISO do?" to say a blue-collar worker who is just moving on from shooting sooc jpegs to shooting raw?

Personally, one option would be to give them the link to the "ISO For Beginners" thread.

I would begin with that statement with any novice. If it comes up in the conversation that they shoot raw, there's a reasonable chance the image processing and editing app they use applies the ISO setting when demosaicing and displaying the image. I wouldn't bring up the fact that the ISO standard doesn't apply to raw files unless it became necessary.

If the novice wants to go into a deeper discussion of the differences between raw and JPEG file formats, I'd keep my comments general and say a JPEG is a processed image file. The in-camera JPEG has been processed with a tonal palette indicated by the chosen ISO. The raw file can be thought of as data... all the information captured during the shutter actuation, including the ISO setting mapping the exposure and image lightness which is applied when the raw file is displayed in the app.

At that point, I'd also suggest that, if they want a more complete understanding of file types and what's going on under the hood, they should look you, Bob and a few others up on DPRevived for a more complete and technically in-depth understanding.

I know my limits and am not ashamed to pass a person on to someone with greater expertise than me on a topic.

But yeah, my strategy when working with and mentoring a novice is to keep the discussion focused on one topic at a time. Lay a foundation of basics and build on it. Go only as deep as needed. Expand into other areas when needed. Provide additional context as needed. Teach them how they can explore deeper on their own.

This does educate but does not help a beginner. A beginner shoots in an automatic mode.
I would say that a lower ISO will cause the camera to select higher exposure. Higher exposure means less noise in the image.

ISO has the same function in whichever exposure mode a photographer chooses. If the conversation shifts from, "What does ISO do?" to, "Which exposure mode should I use?" that would be my cue to have a conversation about the pros/cons of delegating exposure and ISO setting selection to the camera.

I differentiate between a novice and a beginner.

All novices are beginners but not all beginners are novices so I don't accept your generalisation is true for the majority of beginners.

I grew out of Auto mode about 50 shots after picking up my first digital camera and started experimenting with aperture and shutter priority modes

When I got into digital capture for the first time, I shot raw. But I had a lot of experience with film before that. So I'm an outlier. And all the film photographers who are going to convert to digital probably already have. So that means a beginner in photography probably just has cellphone experience. If we assume that the beginner doesn't want to shoot raw, the explanations get much simpler. We should just preface them by saying this doesn't all apply to raw.

As I said before, I think a beginner should turn off all the automation if they really want to learn how to be a good photographer. It was true in the film era, and it's truer now with instant feedback. But I'm probably in the minority there.

I agree.
Ideally, a beginner should have a good teacher that teaches him right things and has time for the student, and a beginner should be willing to learn.
In practice, none of the conditions are fulfilled in most cases.

I agree. Though I have nowhere near the technical expertise as you or the other guys doing the heavy lifting in these threads, I do teach basic photography and editing to individuals and small groups. I start my students on Manual exposure and auto ISO. Then we work on situations where they might elect to use Aperture or Shutter priority. Then we add manual ISO to the mix. I have them start in raw+jpeg and try to give them enough information and practice to make an informed choice. I am following this thread to get ideas to work into my teaching plan.

Jim, what you've described is probably one of the most significant and paradoxical things about the whole photography experience.

It's so incredibly easy to understand photography with film and a simple film camera. There is no mystery at all. Anyone can learn to get very good at it. And acquire sound, scientifically-based technique and knowledge. Yet it is very difficult to get the feedback needed, because it takes so much time in the exposure-sequence-see-results-process. And many drop out because it's hard to get the needed experience.

On the other hand, it's hard to understand photography with a digital camera. The simple truths are just not apparent. And it's very easy to be led to to erroneous conclusions and to believe falsehoods. Yet it is so easy to get feedback - both true and false.

I grew up with film. There was nothing else to use for the first 45 years of my photography journey. Starting before I was 10, I probably learned 90% of the important basics in the first few days. I was earning a living at it in my mid-teens. There was nothing difficult about it at all. And it fascinated me. lf I were 10 today I could certainly learn to use a digital camera. Probably faster than I learned to use a film camera. But actually understand photography? After becoming bored with the repetitiveness of the process, after becoming annoyed at the comparisons to "film photography" (which I would view as irrelevant), after becoming involved in the Internet turf wars of competing brands (which would be inevitable to a teenager today) I would probably become disinterested and forget about it.

Rich

EV is variable and you can set it to what you want 😂🤣