He used only a 50mm lens and color slide film. Too funny.Ī friend now long deceased used only a film SLR that had no light meter. It took another more months than I want to remember to extrapolate that information into lower light requirements, and faster shutter speeds.then I discovered there were people who actually wrote books about this.and the rest is still a lot of experimentation, only now with some hard-earned knowledge to work it all out. Between 10am and 2pm I could pretty much shoot whatever I wanted.
It took me a week to figure out what an ASA was (ISO to you youngsters), and two more weeks and a lot of ruined film to figure out how to load the spools, and then another three or four weeks of testing the formula to find its sweet spot: f:/11 1/250 did the sunny rule. The camera was an old Leica (which I wish I still had) and there was a piece of paper taped to the back that said: 1/ASA at f:/16. After all these years I still find the medium fun yet frustrating, probably the longest amount of time I've spent on one hobby besides sketch art and computers.īecause I was young (12) and totally uninformed (a blithering idiot), when my aunt gave me a camera to play around with, my only guidelines were experimentation. The last few years I've relied solely on online forums and occasionally a class here and there. In the text there were suggested camera settings for different shooting conditions and as I broadened my choices of genre I would often fall back to the text for pointers. It helped me learn the basics of the camera and I just kept at it as the technology evolved. One of the first things I learned was the Sunny 16 rule and it was very helpful until I started fooling around with sports, lowlight, and astrophotography.
The Grimm's text was first published in 1974 and was strictly film SLR based, by the I got my copy the Grimm's were into their twelfth edition and while the text was still strictly film based they did have a few sections on the emerging digital format cameras. When I first made the switch to digital, about 15 years ago I wanted to learn all the features and settings of a DSLR so the first book I read thoroughly was "The Basic Book of Photography" by Tom and Michelle Grimm.