HW1. Photos and Optics (07.03, 23:59)
Reporting is important, let's practice to make your homework attractive:
Traffic Lights at the Corner of Matadero Ave and El Camino Real. Photo by Andrew Adams
Motivation
Cameras in automatic mode try to take care of the technical aspect of photography for you, and just let you frame the scene and shoot. They will attempt to make sure the scene is not too dark, not too bright, not blurry, and so on. These goals don't always match up with the photographer's intent. For this first assignment, you'll be playing with the settings on your camera to produce photos you can't easily produce in automatic mode. You'll be taking photos that your camera might consider "bad" in some technical way, but are nonetheless interesting to look at, and even artistic.
EX1.(8p)
Instructions
- Take some photos that meet the requirements listed below.
- Each photograph you upload should meet at least one of the requirements below, and you should make sure to cover every requirement with at least one photo. You should upload at least five photographs for the assignment, but no more than ten. While a photo can fulfill more than one requirement, you should select exactly one requirement for each photo, and indicate in the photo's caption which requirement you are fulfilling with that photo. Note that these general rules apply to this assignment and all subsequent photo assignments in this course.
- The photos you take are supposed to be technically "bad" in some sense, we want you to create things that are interesting to look at. The "badness" should be intentional for an artistic purpose.
- Requirement 1: At least one photo must be poorly exposed. That is, most of the image should be either very close to black (underexposed) or close to flat white due to oversaturation (overexposed).
- Requirement 2: The main subject of at least one photograph should be motion-blurred, either due to movement of the subject or movement of the camera.
- Requirement 3: In at least one photo, nothing at all should be in focus. It's hard to take a good looking photo where nothing is in focus - be creative!
- Requirement 4: You should use the wrong white balance setting for some intentional effect in at least one photo. The white balance setting on a camera tells the camera what color it should expect the scene illumination to be, for example daylight (which is bluish) or indoor incandescent (which is reddish). Most cameras have an "auto white balance (AWB)" setting, and manual settings for these other illumination types. You don't need to understand white balance in detail to fulfill this requirement. It's a subject we'll cover in detail later in the course.
- Requirement 5: At least one photo should be poorly composed. If you're not sure what to do you may want to consider an exactly centered subject that produces an oddly symmetric photo, a confusion between the subject and a background object, or a horizon that isn't level.
- Add a caption to each photo describing which requirement it satisfies, as described above.
EX2(Bonus). (2p) Holding everything else constant, widening the aperture of a camera lens means (check all the apply):
- less depth of field
- more depth of field
- less light hitting the sensor
- more light hitting the sensor
- a wider field of view
- a narrower field of view
EX3(Bonus). (2p) You have a 50mm f/2 lens. Its maximum aperture diameter is:
- 12.5mm
- 25mm
- 100mm
- 200mm
- Depends on the sensor size