Jazz With A Camera – Are You Really Familiar With Your Gear?

January 2, 2015 by Don Giannatti 12 Comments

Jazz with a camera… quick, can you answer these questions instantly or do you have to think about them… thinking means you need more work. If you were playing a solo you cannot ‘think’ about how to make an f# cause that moment is passed, man… blowin’ by. Just sayin’… You should be able to answer these questions instantly:

ISO 100 is how many stops different from ISO 650?
2. If the ambient light is f5.6 @ 1/250th, what would the strobe have to be giving to be one stop brighter than the ambient?
3. In a dark studio with a flash, which shutter speed will freeze the hair more? A=1/200 / B=1/60 / C=Not Applicable
4. What is the Sunny 16 Rule?
5. According to the Inverse Square Law, would we get twice as much light when placed at half the distance to the subject or 4 times as much light?
6. If you have an exposure reading of f5.6 @1/500 at ISO 400 – which of the following is a reciprocal value of that reading? A – f11 @ 1/60 at ISO 400? B – f4 @ 1/500 at ISO 200? C – f8 @ 1/2000 at ISO 800?
In a dark and noisy room, can you quickly – without looking – make these changes to your setting?

Change ISO?
Change Shutter Speed?
Change Aperture?
Format a card?
Change from Aperture Value to Manual?

Quick… does your lens turn counter clockwise or clockwise to focus from close to infinity?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Don Giannatti is a photographer and author based in Phoenix, Arizona. He runs the Project 52 Pros workshop for aspiring commercial and editorial photographers. You can visit his website here, online portfolio here, and his wonderful lighting essentials here. You can also follow Don’s Facebook stream where this Jazz was originally posted.

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fail

Totally stupid post.. I am cancelling my RSS subscription now, wanted to do that a long time already but this post really made it.. This has to do more with math than anything else and is totally irrelevant..
Format

Formating my card is certainly something I do not want to be able to do without looking…
RJMang

Dumb, useless post, and poorly formatted to boot.
Jake

I am an avid follower of Don’s on his blog, LE. This is a really poor, truncated version of an EXCELLENT post on his blog. Skip this and go read the whole thing.

http://www.lighting-essentials.com/what-ive-learned-so-far-twenty-eight-photography-is-jazz-with-a-camera/
- csnyder82
  
  Thanks for sharing the link. The article hear really is useless, but I did enjoy the original
Maria Fernanda Gonzalez

I want you to ask the top photographers to do this really fast and see if they can answer. Most people don’t know this math stuff as it’s pretty irrelevant. You can know your way around your camera, your comp, etc, without being all snob about it.
- Kay O. Sweaver
  
  Agreed, I don’t really know this stuff intellectually, rather instinctually. I remember one day deciding to get out of Av and just go all M and was surprised to find that my first guess at exposure was usually right or within a stop or two. The point I think is to get past the math and just know.
Ralph Hightower

I don’t have to worry about formatting a card. I shoot film. Okay, I bought a DSLR in December 2013, but from what I read from PhotoFocus, there is an SD Card formatter that is endorsed by the SD card manufacturers.
Sunny f16? Sure, I have used that with moon photography. Lens at f/16, shutter speed at 1 over the ISO for bright sunny days.
steve simmer

The author is right on. If you don’t know this stuff you’re going to be chimping every shot and still not understand how to achieve your intended effect. Opportunity goes by fast.
Amaryllis

I don’t usually say out loud I don’t like posts… but this one was bad. First of all, I don’t even have ISO 650 on my cam and I usually bother with full stops, not thirds of stops. Second, I don’t bother with maths when taking the shot. I count the wheel turns instead. If I move three clicks in aperture, I move three clicks in the other direction in shutter speed. I know how to do the maths, it’s just useless when shooting. Third, it’s pretty obvious the flash itself stops the movement, not the shutter speed in a controlled studio environment… and even if you don’t know that, the only actual difference in the shot will be the ambient light (at this speed though, it probably won’t even show in a dark-ish studio).

I won’t even bother commenting the rest; the last one should be easy to do as long as you know your cam. It doesn’t have anything to do with maths, it just has to do with technique.

All in all, useless post. Agreed with some other comments that were posted before me.
Kurt Langer

I got 100%, so I enjoyed this post. ;-)
sakari

I failed at every question because obscure double numbering was so irritating and confusing.