Note: This is part 5 of a 5-part tutorial series for beginners. Articles are as follows:

Part I: Shooting In Manual Mode: Intro
Part II: Shooting In Manual Mode: ISO
Part III: Shooting In Manual Mode: Shutter Speed / Exposure Time
Part IV: Shooting In Manual Mode: Aperture
Part V: Shooting In Manual Mode: Conclusion (Exposure Triangle)

All three of these factors (ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture) work together to make your final product. Each one plays off the other in some way. This is why it is commonly referred to as the Exposure Triangle. Each is a piece of the triangle--they are separate but they can not stand on their own.

First try taking some photos in Manual Exposure Mode (turn the 'wheel' on your camera to M). You may have to consult your manual to find out how to affect each setting, but you can just try turning all the different wheels on your camera and seeing which setting they affect. On my camera, I can change the shutter speed with a wheel on the top of my camera (close to where my right index finger naturally sits) and I can change the aperture with a wheel on the back of the camera (close to where my right thumb naturally sits). I have to push the ISO button on the top of the camera and spin one of the wheels to change the ISO. (Tip: never use AUTO for ISO setting). So first try setting the shutter speed to 1/100s and the f-number as low as your lens will allow. Take some pictures and see if they are bright enough. If they are not bright enough, you will have to raise the ISO. If they are too bright, then you are in good shape; you can increase the aperture's f-number or decrease the shutter speed. At first it can be deceiving that the shutter speed displays simply as "100" for 1/100s and "200" for 1/200s. Essentially, the higher the number, the shorter the exposure time, because the actual exposure time is the inverse of the number displayed on your camera's display.

My suggestion is to force yourself to use the Manual Exposure Program for a while until you get used to it. It's only three settings, so it becomes second nature pretty quickly. While I can make that suggestion for you, I also have to admit that I did a photography job yesterday, mostly candid photos of a family as they walked down a wooded path, and I did not use Manual Exposure mode one time. I set my ISO to 200 and used the Aperture Priority shooting mode. My reasoning for this was that I was trying to take candid pictures of a family that included both a dog and a two-and-a-half year old child, and I needed to be quick on my feet.

So, I'm not really saying that you have to use Manual Exposure Mode all the time; it does have its disadvantages. I will, however, go so far as to say that if you have a DSLR, you should never use the fully automatic setting. Become familiar with the priority shooting modes (Av, Tv) as well.

Note: This is part 4 of a 5-part tutorial series for beginners. Articles are as follows:

Part I: Shooting In Manual Mode: Intro
Part II: Shooting In Manual Mode: ISO
Part III: Shooting In Manual Mode: Shutter Speed / Exposure Time
Part IV: Shooting In Manual Mode: Aperture
Part V: Shooting In Manual Mode: Conclusion (Exposure Triangle)

Aperture is the hardest concept for new photographers to understand, and for that reason I will skip the technical explanation (I'm not going to pretend I understand every bit of that explanation, heh). Just like every other setting on a camera, changing the aperture affects the brightness of your image (all other settings being equal). Aperture is measured in f-numbers.

Basically, the lower the f-number, the brighter the image. A lower f-number means there is a larger opening to let light in through your lens. Typically speaking, if your lens can go to a lower f-number than someone else's lens, then your lens is more expensive. This is why your lens' lowest f-number is listed right in the name of the lens--it's that important. I have a lens that can go down to f/1.2, and it can practically take pictures in the dark (without a flash). A kit lens can normally go down to f/3.5 (or f/4.5 if it's a zoom lens). The number that most people can rattle off is f/2.8; this is an industry standard of sorts for portrait photography.

As with everything else in photography, Aperture is not only about the lightness/darkness (exposure) of your image. Depth of field can be altered by changing your selected f-number. The best way to explain depth of field is with a photograph. This photo of some kind of vegetable cocktail illustrates the concept very well. The left image has a low f-number and only the front cocktail glass is in focus. The image on the right has a very high f-number and nearly every cocktail glass is perfectly in focus. The image on the left has a narrow depth of field and the image on the right has a wide depth of field. It should also be noted that the f/20 shot requires much more time and preparation to capture. Any photograph that uses a high f-number uses a very long exposure time and consequently requires a tripod.

Changing the aperture inevitably changes the look and emotion of your photograph (that is not necessarily true when changing the exposure time or ISO). When taking a portrait, a lower aperture is normally used so that the background is out of focus. If the background is in focus, it is competing for your attention. That is not desired for portrait photography. If you want to capture a landscape image, on the other hand, one typically wants everything to be in focus if possible; this requires a higher f-number. A higher f-number has a larger depth of field, but it requires a much longer exposure time. It is letting a much smaller amount of light into the camera, so a longer exposure is needed to compensate for this loss of light.

Note: This is part 3 of a 5-part tutorial series for beginners. Articles are as follows:

Part I: Shooting In Manual Mode: Intro
Part II: Shooting In Manual Mode: ISO
Part III: Shooting In Manual Mode: Shutter Speed / Exposure Time
Part IV: Shooting In Manual Mode: Aperture
Part V: Shooting In Manual Mode: Conclusion (Exposure Triangle)

In my opinion, Shutter Speed is the easiest concept to understand in regard to capturing images. Normally, the sensor ("film") is completely covered; it stands by in the dark, waiting to be called upon to capture the light when the shutter is opened.

If your exposure time is one second, it will literally open the shutter for one whole second and let the light in to the sensor during this time. While this long exposure time allows plenty of light to reach your sensor, your image will most likely suffer from a large amount of blur. This is because no human can keep their camera (or subjects, as the case may be) still for a whole second. I have my own personal rule of thumb regarding handheld shots. I can barely hold still for a 1/100s exposure time. I know people can hold their camera relatively still for 1/50th of a second, but I am not one of them. Maybe if I can brace myself on a tree or something, I can attempt a few 1/60s or 1/80s exposures.

Now, let's say you are blessed with ideal shooting conditions. Nice, bright, partly cloudy day with the sun behind a cloud. In these conditions, you can easily push your exposure times to 1/500s or maybe even 1/1000s. These exposure times are used to "stop time"--those photos where you can see every drop of water that someone has splashed into the air. If people could use 1/500s for every picture they took, they probably would. Unfortunately, lighting conditions dictate everything about photography, and lighting conditions typically warrant longer exposure times.

If your camera is on a tripod and your subjects are stationary (landscape photography, inanimate objects like statues), then all bets are off. Any shutter time is acceptable in those conditions. Most professional landscape shots use very long exposure times (>20s) to achieve the desired effect for landscape photography.

Note: This is part 2 of a 5-part tutorial series for beginners. Articles are as follows:

Part I: Shooting In Manual Mode: Intro
Part II: Shooting In Manual Mode: ISO
Part III: Shooting In Manual Mode: Shutter Speed / Exposure Time
Part IV: Shooting In Manual Mode: Aperture
Part V: Shooting In Manual Mode: Conclusion (Exposure Triangle)

One thing that we humans do not fully understand is how severe of an adjustment our eyes and brains make when walking from outside to inside or vice versa. You don't really have to think about it. When you walk outside, you say "Oooh, it's bright out here," and then your eyes adjust within ten seconds and everything's fine. Even in a well-lit home with sunlight streaming through the windows in the middle of the day, the world outside your home is literally hundreds of times brighter than the world inside your home. We do not realize the full extent of this because our eyes and brains adjust to these differences very quickly and accurately. Your camera, on the other hand, requires you to guide it through these changes. Typically, a camera attempts to make up for these differences by using the inbuilt flash when indoors, because nearly every camera is not well-equipped for shooting indoors. If I'm shooting on Manual Mode outdoors and I walk inside without adjusting my camera at all, the resulting indoor images will be severely underexposed (read: every pixel will be black) and completely unusable.

ISO is one of the easiest concepts to understand in photography: the higher the ISO value, the more sensitive your camera is to light. All other things being equal, a higher ISO will produce a brighter image. In order to understand ISO, one must have a basic understanding of film speed. Higher speed film (higher number) is more sensitive to light, so it can be used in situations with lower levels of light, such as indoors with no flash. High speed film (or high ISO values) make it easier to shoot in most kinds of light, but as always, anything that makes it easier to shoot also comes burdened with a sacrifice. This is a steadfast rule in the world of photography; never forget it.

The sacrifice one makes when using higher ISO values is that the photograph/image is much lower quality all-around. One could use ISO 800 for outdoor photography, but that is extremely rare because photographs taken with higher speed film are more "grainy" and are lacking some of the detail. If your lighting situation can afford you using ISO 100, you should try to stick with that. Images captured with a high ISO rating (800 or greater is a good rule of thumb for most cameras) have much higher levels of image noise. Regarding images, noise has the typical definition: anything random and unwanted in your image. It is basically a bunch of dots/specks that interrupt your image and keep it from being as sharp as it could be.

Here are a couple rules of thumb:

1. Use ISO values that are multiples of 100. Try to stay away from ISO 125, 160, 250, and so forth. ISO ratings that are divisible by 100 are a "full stop" apart. All other ISO values are digitally interpolated and are therefore believed to be inferior. This point has been debated quite a bit, and different people come to different conclusions based on the model of camera that is tested.
2. ISO should be the last thing you modify in a low light situation. Again--this is debatable. But here is how I come to this conclusion: no matter what other factors are present (tripod, lighting), a higher ISO value will degrade your image quality. The shutter speed and aperture may change the look and emotion of your photograph, but a higher ISO will always degrade the quality. Always. Some people may argue this point and say that they "like" grain/noise. That is a matter of taste, but a noisy image is undoubtedly a lower quality image. Keep your ISO as low as the lighting situation will allow. I have a very low noise camera model, and I still try to never go above 400 ISO.
3. Test your ISO values while viewing your images at 100%. Look, if you want to be sure that ISO 1000 is "too high" for you to use, capture a bunch of images at ISO 1000, and look at them on your PC at 100%. This means that every pixel in the image will take up one pixel on your monitor. In order to do this, you will most likely have to zoom in so far that you will not even be able to tell which part of the image you are viewing. That's fine; ignore all that. Check the quality of the image file without any regard for it as a photograph (remember, this is just for testing purposes). Is there a lot of noise? Come to your own conclusions. Draw your own line in the sand about what values you will not use. I personally try to not go above ISO 400 (which is unfortunately the 'default' value for a lot of cameras on auto mode), and I definitely do not go above ISO 800 unless the circumstances are extremely dire.
4. Buying a better lens will not help. The way your camera behaves at different ISO values will not change if you buy a $1000 lens. It is a function of your camera's sensor and there is nothing you can do to change that. Buying an expensive lens may afford you the ability to sometimes use a lower ISO value (due to some other factors covered in different sections of this tutorial), but it will not change how your camera behaves at a given ISO.

Note: This is part 1 of a 5-part tutorial series for beginners. Articles are as follows:

Part I: Shooting In Manual Mode: Intro
Part II: Shooting In Manual Mode: ISO
Part III: Shooting In Manual Mode: Shutter Speed / Exposure Time
Part IV: Shooting In Manual Mode: Aperture
Part V: Shooting In Manual Mode: Conclusion (Exposure Triangle)

I had a longtime fear of mastering my own songs. What is commonly referred to as "audio mastering" usually involves only a few subtle changes to the final recorded version of a song. These are things like evening out the amounts of bass and treble with the rest of the frequencies, making sure the volumes are consistent throughout your songs, and lowering the levels of some problem frequencies like noise and hiss. If something is properly mastered, it will sound good in laptop speakers and expensive studio monitors alike. To a guy like me, this was always daunting and intimidating until I actually sat down and attempted to teach myself. Just like with most things in life, it was only intimidating because people who are "in the know" want it to be intimidating. If everyone realized that most mastering technicians are just following a few rules to make all songs sound alike, then those guys would no longer be able to charge a thousand bucks to master an album. Of course there are a lot of people who actually stand out from the rest... people who are very good at it and deserve to get paid for what they do.

Many things in life are like that--shrouded in mystery for no good reason. Photography is no exception; it is made out to be something that's very difficult to do without the aid of your camera's built-in shooting modes. People who know how to take photos without the "assistance" of their camera's auto/priority modes are partly responsible for keeping it shrouded in mystery. I have no problem coming out and saying that taking photos in Full Manual mode is very easy and it can be reduced to three variables: aperture, ISO (film speed), and exposure time. Together, these are commonly referred to as the exposure triangle. And each of those variables all has to do with "brightness" of an image. Unless lighting conditions are absolutely ideal, then you have to make sacrifices to get your pictures looking the way you want. There are certainly other things that separate some photographers from the pack. Style, attention to detail, and lighting are all very important and have nothing to do with your camera or camera settings.

Too much emphasis is placed on the camera that a photographer owns. If you take good pictures, people say "you must have a very nice camera." Photographers do not like this at all--the idea being that the camera is responsible for the pictures and not the person taking them. Imagine eating dinner at someone's house and saying "That was a delicious meal. You must have a very nice oven." Or telling a painter "What a nice painting; you must have very nice brushes." At that point you are transferring the compliment away from the cook/artist and crediting the tools they used to make the meal/painting. A camera is just that: a tool. No camera automatically takes beautiful pictures. If you play the piano very well, people don't say that you were just playing on a nice piano; they are inclined to give the instrumentalist 100% of the credit. People realize that it takes a lot of time, practice, and effort to play an instrument well or make a masterful painting. This emphasis on someone's camera leads to an unnecessary mystique about people's cameras and the way they go about shooting images. It's just like anything else: it takes patience, knowledge, and experience to do it well.

Most people who know how to shoot in Manual mode keep their camera parked on the M. This isn't because you can take better pictures with Manual mode; it's just because it allows you more control and knowledge of the situation. If you don't quite have enough light, then you will quickly find out in Manual mode, whereas using one of your camera's shooting modes will oftentimes give you a false sense that your camera is taking good photos.

I try not to live my life in fear. Different people would have you be afraid of different things. Nancy Grace wants you to be afraid of anyone who may ever come in contact with your children in any way. Dr. Oz wants you to be afraid of apple juice and energy drinks. Hank Williams Jr. wants you to be afraid of our democratically-elected president. Jenny McCarthy wants you to be afraid of vaccinations. Alex Jones wants you to be afraid of.... well, everything. That list could go on and on, as you well know. Some people literally think that everyone is trying to hack their Wi-Fi network, kidnap their children, and riddle any car with bullets as soon as someone shows disapproval of their driving. That's fine (I suppose), but it's also fine if I choose to ignore those people and live my life.

The problem is that this thinking affects me even if I choose not to buy into it. Being a thirty-something-white-male puts me in the category of "strangers that people avoid." For instance, I can't offer to help a middle school kid carry something heavy into their house. I can't offer to give a couple of women a jump if their car won't start unless there are 30 witnesses present. Women love to say that chivalry is dead, but what has really happened is that any man who offers to help a woman is "creepy" and any man who even speaks to a child he doesn't know is a "pervert." The result is that my only option is to sit by and let people suffer unless the person in need is a man similar to me in both age and stature.

But it's different when dealing with your children. Now I have to try to strike a balance between choosing not to live in fear and being a "bad parent." [If you ever wonder what it takes to be a bad parent, just think of all the things that made someone a good parent 30 years ago.] Even 15-20 years ago, most parents did not know where their kids were for a few hours a day. In the summer, I would get on my bike and I'd be gone. No cell phones. No GPS. No chip implanted in my skull. You can't do that anymore. There is a very specific chain of custody with your children that is arranged with cell phones, background checks, and bodyguards.

Clearly I jest... but to what extent? Bill Burr jokes that "anything they're doing to your dog now, they're going to be doing to you in ten years." This is a reference to the tracking microchip implanted in most dogs. Is too much safety really a bad thing? Is there such a thing as too much safety?

[Without getting too much into politics,] I for one would rather err on the side of freedom than on the side of safety. I don't fear terrorists as much as I fear having my phone tapped by my own government. I value the freedom I had as a child. I could venture deep into the woods across the street from my parents' house, far from the eyes of any authority. And what did I do with this freedom? I caught crayfish in the stream. I cleared out bike trails with a baseball bat and a rake. I climbed up the bank of the river, grabbing on to exposed roots, pretending it was a massive cliff.

This is why I'm looking for a house with a significant amount of land. I want my children to experience some of that freedom that is oh-so-hard to come by these days. I want to be able to send my kids outside to play without it being a death sentence of boredom and drudgery in a fenced-in area the size of a tennis court. Due to a nearly-collapsed housing market, it appears that my wife and I can afford our dream home at the age of thirty. For this we are grateful.

Maybe I'm projecting my desires onto my children. They will probably care little about how I grew up, just as when I was young I cared little about how my parents grew up. But it's worth a shot, and it's hard to have a love of the outdoors when you hardly have any room to breathe.

Life is good, and I have nothing but thanks for this opportunity. [I am, on the other hand, already upset by the rapid-fire emails from the realtor and my wife reading the stats out loud all night of every house within 100 miles.]

It's getting to the point where no matter what you believe, the arguments that support your ideals are based partly on lies. There is probably nothing wrong with your ideals, it's just that all of the typical arguments in favor of them have turned to sensationalism and laziness. Liberals were mad at G.W. Bush for driving up the national debt ($4.8 trillion) and starting wars. Conservatives are mad at Obama for driving up the national debt ($4 trillion in three years) and starting wars. It seems the only difference in the political parties is how exactly they choose to mismanage the taxpayers' money. One side spends it on entitlements, the other on unpaid-for tax cuts. There are very few differences in the parties' handling of 95% of the issues, yet they are somehow pitted against each other based on sensationalist arguments. Even if you are just a regular, rational conservative or liberal, the people on TV making the arguments in your defense are all crazy!

While G.W. Bush was in office, the debt ceiling was raised seven times. This prompted much anger from liberals, namely Senator Barack Obama.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
-– Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

Ouch. The pot calling the kettle.... nevermind. So now that we have reached our debt ceiling (read: debt target) once again, Democrats act like it is a foregone conclusion, that raising the debt limit is no big deal, and that anyone who is upset about it simply doesn't understand macro economics. The Republicans, on the other hand, talk about the increases in spending under the Obama administration, while completely ignoring the fact that the government grew by leaps and bounds under G.W. Bush even as he actively lowered the government's revenue stream. I'm not against cutting taxes, but cutting taxes while raising spending is clearly a recipe for increasing the national debt. People always talk about the national debt placing a burden on future generations, but there are many current-day problems with getting the nation into debt. It is largely responsible for the devaluation of our currency because we are in essence printing more money to cover our debts.

Does it even matter who you vote for anymore?

I've been interested in robotics since I was a child. There were several times when I was young that I was going to spend a large chunk of my savings on a toy robot (before they were widespread and commercially available, I used to look through Edmund's Scientific catalogs at the primitive robots). Now I follow several robotics blogs. The best one right now is http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics

The most interesting developments in recent years all have to do with autonomous robotics. The Roomba (or robotic floorvacs in general) is a common example of this. The Roomba Robotic Floorvac is autonomous in that it makes its own decisions about where to go, where to avoid, and when it is finished. You do not need to program it or provide it with the floor plan of your house in order for it to do its job vacuuming. It also knows how to avoid stairs on its own.

RoboCup is an annual international robotics competition and the star events in this competition are the soccer events. These are not remote-controlled robots; they actually know how to play soccer. Each side's goalposts are a different color so the robots know how to orient themselves based on the goal posts and the lines in the soccer "field." There are two main divisions, humanoid robots and "other." The humanoid robots are bipedal. Within the humanoid category, there are several sizes, the largest being adult sized robots. The larger sizes are not interesting yet; they spend most of their energy just trying to balance and not fall over and they basically behave like zombies. If they fall over, they cannot correct themselves. The next size down are teen robots and then KidSize robots. The KidSize humanoid robots are actually quite interesting. They can make passes to teammates, the goalies can dive (more like a controlled fall) to make a save, and they can stand back up if/when they fall over. They know to go back to the center of the field after a goal is scored.

For the past several years, a team from Germany has cleaned up in the KidSize humanoid category, but this year the USA took the cup thanks to a team of graduate students from Virginia Tech. The soccer games themselves are not particularly interesting, but the implications for robotics are quite interesting. It should be stated that the end goal of these roboticists is to have a team of AdultSize humanoid robots that can beat the best team of human players in the year 2050. For now it seems like a lofty goal, but given the advances made in the past five years alone, it may be possible before the year 2050.

The finals match of the KidSize humanoid robots can be seen here. And for a whole lot more videos in all of the (often strange) categories, you can go here.

Since introverts are not very good at introducing themselves, I'll do it for them. Carl King has put together a list of ten myths about introverts. The word introvert is misunderstood and thought of as a bad trait. It's often used in retrospect to describe serial killers and closet abusers but it is a character trait that defines about one quarter of the population.

Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.
Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite.

Myth #5 – Introverts don’t like to go out in public.
Nonsense. Introverts just don’t like to go out in public FOR AS LONG. They also like to avoid the complications that are involved in public activities. They take in data and experiences very quickly, and as a result, don’t need to be there for long to “get it.” They’re ready to go home, recharge, and process it all.

Myth #9 – Introverts don’t know how to relax and have fun.
Introverts typically relax at home or in nature, not in busy public places. Introverts are not thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies. If there is too much talking and noise going on, they shut down. Their brains are too sensitive to the neurotransmitter called Dopamine. Introverts and Extroverts have different dominant neuro-pathways.

Remind you of anyone? =]

Annie Oakley: A free ticket to a movie screening.
Apple Box: A box that actors stand on while filming a scene.
Best Boy: Assistant to the head gaffer (see gaffer).
Clapsticks: The wood sticks that are struck together to signify the beginning of filming a scene.
Click Track: Audible click used in musical scoring.
Dolly Shot: Wheeling the camera on tracks for motion in a film shot.
Dope Sheet: Storyboards (see storyboards) used in animation film.
Final Cut: The last edited version of a film ready for release.
Gaffer: Electrician on a film set.
The Grip: Head fix-it person on the set.
Juicer: Electrician in charge of the main power source.
Lap Dissolve: Editing together two shots, one fading in, the other fading out.
Matte Shot: Film editing technique where foreground and background images are placed together to form one shot.
Oater: A western.
Outtake: Footage not used in the final cut.
P-O-V: Acronym for point-of-view. Camera is positioned to simulate a character's line of sight ("head cam").
Rear Projection: Cost-cutting filming technique where actors stand in front of a projection on a translucent screen.
Rushes: Daily screenings of footage from a work-in-progress.
SFX: Acronym for sound effects.
Sky Pan: Huge floodlights used for large areas to be lit.
Slate: Board used with clapsticks to identify scenes during editing.
Splice: Editing two pieces of film together.
Space Opera: Slang for science fiction film.
Storyboards: Sketches drawn to depict, shot-for-shot, the action to be filmed.
Swish Pan: Rapid camera movement causing a blurring sensation.
Weenie: A plot device that is considered to be a gimmick.
Walla Walla: Background noise in a scene.