The class project takes you through 4 exercises to make it easy to understand your camera and how to take great photos.

The first three exercises focus on understanding the 3 basic settings and understanding how it affects your photos. The last exercise binds together what you have learned to create an image, applying your knowledge.

There is no requirement for the photos to be great but I promise you, doing the exercises will help you understand and work your camera much faster than otherwise.

The steps

Exercise 1 - Shutter Speed:

Set your camera to Shutter Priority (Tv) and shoot 2 photos to understand how the Shutter Speed influences your photos.

Slow shutter speed of around 1/20 or below
Fast shutter speed of 1/200 or above

Exercise 2 - Aperture:

Set your camera to Aperture Priority (Av) and shoot 2 photos to understand how the Aperture influences your photos.

Lowest F-stop number your lens can perform (F4 or below)
High F-stop number, F8 or F11

Exercise 3 - ISO:

Leave your camera in Aperture Priority (Av) but go to a dark room or go out at night. Find a place with a little bit of light and shoot two photos to understand how your camera performs in low light with increased ISO and how much noise it produces:

Use your base ISO of 100 (or below if your camera can go lower)
Increase your ISO to 2000 or above

Exercise 4 - Composition:

Put everything from the past three exercises together with some thought on the composition and shoot a photo where you are intentional of all 4 parts, Shutter Speed, Aperture, ISO and the composition.

Upload this photo to the class project with a short description of what you tried to achieve and your thoughts on how it went.

John Gaskell

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