The Beginners Questions Area

What a sad perspective and depressive view onto this fabulous and beautiful world. Everything we humans create is art, our lives are art.

It is not true that no-one has answered your query about EV 0.

Iliah Borg answered it very clearly in his post at

dprevived.com/t/raw-histogram-and-why-does-it-matter/1848/post/16287/

His explanation of EV 0 is very clear. If you do not understand it then that is another matter.

JimKasson also explained it to you prior to Iliah Borg's post.

Just because you do not understand correct explanations does not mean no-one has answered your questions as you claim.

Yes, I still keep my inner child alive.

oh no he didnt. because Illiah just posted the correct information. and this is why some people can teach or cant teach. It took Illiah 3 posts to explain his program and none of you and i mean none have explained it correctly to me in any posts.

The information in Iliah's first post explaining EV 0 was correct.

Which of his sentences are you claiming are not correct?

His subsequent posts included additional information because his earlier post was not clear to you.

Just because an explanation is not clear to you does not make it incorrect.

JimKasson also explained it correctly to you prior to Iliah Borg's post, just not in as much detail.

I agree. And being an ignorant and arrogant self-proclaimed expert won’t lead to a successful venture.

It's a relative scale of raw data intensity in stops. Where do you want to start counting from? Clipping? Typical metered mid-gray? The absolute value doesn't matter, just count the stops from whatever reference you deem important to you.

As a photographer, where one would expect the zero on the meter scale to be? On all the cameras I used it is always the midtone, something intended to become a midtone.
I wasn't explaining the program, we were discussing a very small aspect of it, and that's after Jim already gave the correct answer.
The whole thing is a bit odd because we have the manual that explains the program, in detail.

Teacher: Hey kids we are going to run a 100 meter race today. students, but teacher were is the start and finish line . teacher, in the playgrounds, students, but teacher we have 5 of them 🤣😂
would like to continue but i have to go to work .

@DonaldB

Read Iliah's post just before your previous post.

He also says JimKasson gave you the correct answer.

Sigh. I said EV0 is 3 stops down from clipping and thus I'm a bad teacher? As I said before, in addition to whatever qualities are necessary in a teacher, learning requires a student who wants to learn, will listen carefully, and do the homework with care.

This goes both ways. Teachers should also listen to the feedback of students and adapt.

Good move. But it would be even better if the beginners had time to post their question before the answers were given. 😃
I think those articles are better suited for a FAQ than a beginner's forum.

I have answered a lot of newbie questions on a whole other, but also kind of technical, topic for several decades. I've found some things.

1. The answer doesn't only need to be correct. It must also be delivered in a way and a language the newbie can understand. Too many technical terms, of which they need to look up every single one, only discourage them and cause confusion. You aren't talking to your peers, you are talking to someone who basically knows nothing about the topic. You not only need to know your stuff, you need both the ability and the will to deliver your answer in such a way that the newbie can handle it.

2. Newbies often feel stupid. If they run into long answers way beyond their level of understanding for the topic they feel diminished. Loose interest, give up, go to another forum...

3. It's often better to serve newbies small portions that they can handle and feel happy about mastering. Then they soon come back for another serving. After all, isn't that how we all learn new stuff, one bit at the time?

I don't see the point of your example because it is actually supporting what I said.

The teacher's information is correct.

The 100m race could be held in the same playground every time. Therefore, the long term students will know which one to go to and so need no further explanation.

Students recently arrived at the school, just like people new to photography, might need further clarification.

Just because the teacher's information was clear to some students and not clear to other students does not make the information incorrect.

Which of Iliah Borg's sentences are you claiming are not correct?

When asked by a novice photographer, "What does ISO do?", I would begin by saying, "ISO is a setting used to manage the lightness of a photo." I submit that distilled but accurate response is no more difficult to understand than the erroneous, "ISO is a setting that helps set exposure."

If you disagree, I invite you to make your case.

Would you say that to someone shooting only raw? If so, how would you say that ISO manages lightness?

I think the advice given to people shooting JPEG and those shotting raw should be different.

In fairness to Bill he is clearly referring to advice for novices which imo, based on my experience, are very unlikely to be shooting raw straight after putting a camera in their hand for the first time. Bill also said he would begin by saying, "ISO is a setting used to manage the lightness of a photo.". He didn't say that would be the only advice. The advice Bill said he would give is appropriate imo.

Someone shooting raw is much more likely to be beyond the novice stage but can obviously still be a beginner and yes in that case the advice for "What does ISO do" should be different.

And this is where it can get "messy" in public forums depending on the interests and level of comprehension of the beginner the advice is being given to.

Just out of curiosity, what advice would you give to the question "What does ISO do?" to say a blue-collar worker who is just moving on from shooting sooc jpegs to shooting raw?

Personally, one option would be to give them the link to the "ISO For Beginners" thread.

I would begin with that statement with any novice. If it comes up in the conversation that they shoot raw, there's a reasonable chance the image processing and editing app they use applies the ISO setting when demosaicing and displaying the image. I wouldn't bring up the fact that the ISO standard doesn't apply to raw files unless it became necessary.

If the novice wants to go into a deeper discussion of the differences between raw and JPEG file formats, I'd keep my comments general and say a JPEG is a processed image file. The in-camera JPEG has been processed with a tonal palette indicated by the chosen ISO. The raw file can be thought of as data... all the information captured during the shutter actuation, including the ISO setting mapping the exposure and image lightness which is applied when the raw file is displayed in the app.

At that point, I'd also suggest that, if they want a more complete understanding of file types and what's going on under the hood, they should look you, Bob and a few others up on DPRevived for a more complete and technically in-depth understanding.

I know my limits and am not ashamed to pass a person on to someone with greater expertise than me on a topic.

But yeah, my strategy when working with and mentoring a novice is to keep the discussion focused on one topic at a time. Lay a foundation of basics and build on it. Go only as deep as needed. Expand into other areas when needed. Provide additional context as needed. Teach them how they can explore deeper on their own.