The Beginners Questions Area

need more information.

Sorry but I disagree both with needing books or using simplified but fundamentally flawed concepts. The books are frankly boring and old skool, the concepts will mislead you and are hard to unlearn.

What is needed is an approach that makes use of some of the strengths of digital photography: feedback is immediate, experimentation is free.
IMO that means that at the start a beginner needs to learn only that light comes in and gets recorded and an image comes out and that she/he can influence both sides.
Now most people are inclined to start without reading more than a quick start and start trying. Where we can help them is by giving them some structure in how to do their experimentation.
For instance: pick a scene around the house. Photograph it (1) at full auto and with (2) a couple of shutter Time values (3) ditto Aperture values. Repeat this after each meal.
Then look at the photo's: which worked, which failed.

As you see I don't offer explanation at this point. And ISO stays on auto as it should for beginners

Both of you are looking at the technical side of photography from an academic point of view. I am aware the infamous triangle is not technically correct.

I work in Engineering and we use a lot of design methods which are not scientifically precise, but give a good approximation of true behaviour. The triangle is a photographic equivalent of something that is not true technically, but gives a beginner acceptable results.

Sorry, I just completely disagree with that. Judging by the recent thread here and countless other threads just like it, the truth cannot come later. Once people have accepted the “alternate facts”, there’s often little hope that the “actual facts” are ever going to sink in - especially when the original alternate ones came from a presumably trustworthy source. Just look around, people are believing all sorts of crap nowadays. If these people can’t be swayed at all by easily verifiable facts - what hope is there for sorting out the exposure triangle, years after they’ve “known” different?

beginners start with there phones these days. . learning the art of photography for people with no imagination needs to start with composition.

cant wait for the explanation of exposure = shutter speed /aperture when global shutter comes into play, is that term "shutter" even the right word 🤨🙄

I cannot believe I am reading this. You can never hope to educate yourself about anything, without a good textbook, with the emphasis on good.

A beginner will learn faster without frustration if he/she has read about some basic technical/artistic concepts first. A book written by a reliable author is the best place to start. Not the contradictory word of internet.

A beginner need to know about the pictorial effects of aperture and shutter speed. Noise tends to increase with increasing ISO. I guess the beginner needs to know what happens when you move the ISO dial.

Nice shot. Man, the access in those days was so much better than today.

I was at Road America for the 30th Can-Am reunion, and we were in the process of publishing a book on the history with Pete Lyons as author. I had some proof pages printed as it hadn't been bound yet, and several of the McLaren team mechanics were there, just devouring those pages and telling stories that really should have been in the book.

My avatar is shot at 600mm from Turn 5 at Road America, and this is the only angle I get these days. Farther up the turn for different vantage points and shorter more stable lenses is now blocked off by catch fencing, lots of it that you cant shoot over, and a emergency response truck directly in the shooters line of sight. I get the safety stuff, but I am unaware of anybody hitting the outer wall in Turn 5 and challenging the 4 foot tall chain link that has been there for years. Even the guys with press passes are grumbling.

To use an analogy. I am designing some foundations for a building right now. My textbooks give me a simple method that approximates the truth and gives me safe results, but which I know and the academic who wrote my textbook knows is not really happens under that block of concrete. Sometimes fake news is useful.

We need to control DoF, subject movement. In the field I use ISO as the third factor to get what I want.

I like those home renovator tv shows ( pun, im a tradie), where the contestants cant even swing a hammer. which is like a lot photographers at our camera club. we have A graders that still don't know what composition is. Its hard enough for them to get an image in focus when holding a macro workshop 🤣😂

I doubt that your design methods are based on a misconception. If you're shooting raw, the exposure triangle is based on a misconception. For JPEG shooters, it could be a good teaching aid if it were called something else. Brightness triangle?

Thanks. A few more:

I remember learning and revering the exposure triangle. Looking back, it actually did not explain anything. People who teach are not beginners, but some of those teachers think the exposure triangle explains it, but it does not.

I used to check in with the turn marshals and climb a tree just above the apex of 6A (the second half of the corkscrew) at Laguna Seca, and shoot the cars coming over the hill in turn 5. One day someone spun out and went through the hay bales and ended up against the trunk of my tree. I spent an uncomfortable minute or so hoping the car wouldn't catch on fire. I never went up in that tree again.

It sure can be. We "dial" numbers on telephones. When we're done with a call, we "hang up". There's a button on the phone for the "operator".

Maybe Brightness Triangle but i would call it image lightness or just lightness triangle because what it actually teaches is that there is an inverse relationship between any 2 of aperture, shutter speed and ISO for a constant image lightness, not a constant exposure*.

The misconception the Exposure Triangle teaches is that for a given scene lighting

f/8, 1/200s, iso 400
and
f/8, 1/100s, iso 200

are the same exposure*.

They both output the same image lightness but the iso 400 shot has only half the exposure* of the iso 200 shot because less light struck the sensor.

* exposure - amount of light that struck the sensor per unit area while the shutter was open.