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We are done with the first section of our photo challenge!  It took two months, but we finished all of the Understanding Exposure lessons.

In the final lesson of the Understanding Exposure series, Tying It All Together, we were prompted to go out and shoot using all the tools we learned in previous lessons.  One thing I still have not grasped from the final lesson is the Sunny 16 rule.

This is what No Bad Foto has to say about it:

The Sunny 16 Rule is a general rule of thumb which states that when using f/16 on a sunny day, you can use a shutter speed that is roughly equivalent to the ISO setting to get proper exposure of your scene. So, if we use ISO 100, we can set the aperture to f/16 and set shutter speed to 1/125 sec which is roughly equivalent to ISO. Given this as your baseline combination, all the other combinations below will produce the same exposure.

• f/5.6, 1/1000 sec, ISO 100
• f/8, 1/500 sec, ISO 100
• f/11, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
• f/16, 1/125 sec, ISO 100 – baseline
• f/22, 1/60 sec, ISO 100

Notice how these combination remind you of this general rule of thumb?

1. Double your shutter speed for each full-stop decrease in f-stop OR halve your f/stop for each full-stop increase in shutter speed

2. Halve your shutter speed for each full-stop increase in f-stop OR double your f/stop for each full-stop decrease in shutter speed

Maybe it’s because I have never been good at Math, but I am just drawing a blank every time I read those paragraphs and try to figure out what they are saying.  I wonder if anyone else had a problem with it…

These lessons helped to reinforce the basics for me, but I still learned a lot along the way. I am able to capture movement much better than before, which is great and was something I really wanted to learn!.  And, hopefully, when I’m out at Disney taking photos I won’t have to guess at the settings that will work anymore.

Chris and I went to a National’s Game on Easter Sunday with a few friends, and that gave me the opportunity to test out my new wide-angle lens.  It is now my favorite lens (it hasn’t come off my camera since Easter!) and I can’t wait to go to Disney to shoot with it some more!

I really loved looking at the differences between my wide-angle lens and my telephoto (or zoom) lens.  With my telephoto lens, I wanted to see how much of the scene I could capture.  As you can tell, it’s not very much compared to the above wide-angle shot!

One of my favorite lessons was Shutter Speed.  Capturing moving objects has always been really hard for me, so I really loved that No Bad Foto put it in such an easy-to-learn format. I also feel like I will be able to talk about photography and not sounds like a complete n00b, which is what I was really aiming for with these lessons.

Today we’re starting a new set of lessons, venturing out of the basics and into the more complex world of photography!  I can’t wait!

You can find our previous lessons here:

Aperture Photo Challenge

Shutter Speed Photography Challenge

ISO Photography Challenge

And if you’re participating in our photography group, you can link up your blog posts here!

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