This nifty interactive tool will help you learn photography basics

Dec 7, 2016

Dunja Djudjic

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

This nifty interactive tool will help you learn photography basics

Dec 7, 2016

Dunja Djudjic

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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According to the results of a survey Sony published in 2012, as much as two thirds of non-professional DSLR users have never or rarely taken their camera out of auto mode. There may be plenty of reasons for this, such as buying a camera for fun or as a status symbol. But one of the reasons is that the initial learning process can be way too confusing for the beginners. A London based animator and designer, Simon Roberts, created a fun solution to this problem.

He aims at simplifying the learning process and making it more visual and interactive. This is why he has created this interesting interactive graphic for all the beginner photographers out there. This tool has a simple design and allows you to adjust the “holy three” of the camera settings: aperture, shutter speed and ISO. You can also adjust light so it depicts different levels of brightness, from “half moon” to “sun on snow”.

As you adjust the settings, you can see the changes in the photo. The change of every aspect is placed under the feature responsible for it: depth of field is under aperture settings, motion blur is under the shutter speed, and the image noise is under ISO. As you play with the settings, you can see the changes on the camera as well. The tool also shows whether the photo is likely to be over or underexposed. As an addition, it shows the exposure effect of every adjustment you make. When you’re done with adjusting the virtual camera, you can take a photo and see how it would look like.

photographymapped1

In addition to the interactive graphic, Photography Mapped also provides simple and useful graphic for photography beginners. You can see them on the website, but there’s also a chance of ordering prints. This way your can have a cheat sheet on the wall.

The tool is intended for beginners and it can help them step out of the Auto mode. But, even those who know their camera’s heart and soul could find it fun to play a bit with the interactive graphic.

Do you like this tool? Did you try it out? Do you have someone to recommend it to?

[Photography Mapped via Reddit]

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Dunja Djudjic

Dunja Djudjic

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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2 responses to “This nifty interactive tool will help you learn photography basics”

  1. Balayage Avatar
    Balayage

    Why are all you bloggers writing about this poor representation of photography? There are MUCH better online tools out there that show the real effect of camera settings.

  2. JOhn C Avatar
    JOhn C

    OR you could take your camera off auto and “play with it”. Since we can view images instantly you can see the results in camera (unless you are shooting film, which you probably aren’t if you are still learning the basics) or download it to a computer almost instantly to view the details of the shot. Do some of the old school exercises where you shoot down a fence and change the f-stop to understand DOF, shoot moving cars with different speeds to see the blur. If we were back in the film days I could see more value in this, but it costs virtually nothing to shoot hundreds of pictures of the same thing and you can see EXACTLY what the effect of each setting is.