NYIP, Unit 2, Lesson 5

I started on Lesson 5, Image Capture, last week.  The first section was about how film works.  This is the kind of information that somebody feels is important to teach, but that few students appreciate.  It's suppose to help you understand why you set certain measurements to what on your camera, whether it's film or digital.  It's probably very useful information, but it was still boring.

OK, maybe it wasn't that boring.

How Film Works:
Yes Mag has a simple explanation of how film works.  Visit this page to see one of the earliest color picture even if you don't give a rat's hat about how film works. It almost looks 3-D. 

Visit the University of North Carolina's article from How Stuff Works for a more thorough, but still readable, explanation. There is a simple ISO (film speed) chart that you might find useful.

ISO Settings:
The ISO settings rate the "speeds" of different films.  The film speed refers to its sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO rating the "faster" the film (the more sensitive it is to light).  Digital cameras also have ISO settings and the relationship between ISO speed to light sensitivity is the same as film cameras.

Face the Light Face the Light explains ISO and adds a summary at the end of each section so if you don't want to read all the details just look for the "Summary" section. 

For visual learners, Digital-Camera has a video tutorial. 

White Balance:
There's a simple explanation of white balance on Sandro Digital Photography as part of their free photography course   There's a video that shows how to set custom white balance on Canon cameras.

Memory Cards:
The professionals who conversed for this lesson said that any name brand memory card is good, but they mentioned SanDisk and Lexar by name.   They also said that it's better to buy several smaller cards (1 GB) than cards with more memory, format the card in your camera, and that it's better to delete the pictures from your computer than your camera.

The Digital SLR Guide explains digital SLR memory cards and memory card reader.