Chapter 2 — Exercises

This chapter was about understanding the instrument, so these exercises mix two things: hands-on shooting that demonstrates what the parts do, and seeing-and-reasoning drills that make the vocabulary stick. A phone is a perfectly good camera for every one of them — in fact, several are written specifically to prove it. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do at least the starred and odd-numbered items; model answers and critiques for those are in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep everything you shoot — the aperture pair becomes your portfolio reference.

Part A — Know the machine (Read the Frame & reasoning)

Exercise 2.1 ⭐ — Find the five parts. Pick up whatever camera you own (phone included) and, out loud or in writing, point to or name where each of the five parts lives: the light-tight body, the aperture (inside the lens), the shutter (mechanical or electronic), the sensor, and the lens. For the processor, name one thing it does that you can see in the result. The goal is to stop seeing a black box.

Exercise 2.2 ⭐ — Pinhole logic. Without looking back at §2.1, answer in a sentence each: (a) Why does a smaller pinhole give a sharper but dimmer image? (b) Which two modern, adjustable controls are the "descendants" of the pinhole's fixed size-and-timing trade-off?

Exercise 2.3 ⭐⭐ — Megapixels vs. size, in your own words. A friend is about to buy a phone "because it has 108 megapixels and that's way more than my camera's 24." Write the two or three sentences you'd say to them about why megapixel count is not the spec that will determine their image quality, and what is.

Exercise 2.4 ⭐⭐ — Read the spec sheet. Find the spec sheet of any camera or phone you're curious about (the manufacturer's page is fine). Locate and write down four numbers: megapixels, sensor size (or sensor "type"), the lens focal length(s), and the widest aperture. Then write one sentence predicting, from those numbers alone, where this camera will be strong and where it will struggle.

Exercise 2.5 ⭐⭐⭐ — Explain demosaicing to a twelve-year-old. In plain language and no jargon, explain how a camera whose light-sensors are "colorblind" still manages to produce a full-color photo. You may use an analogy (a grid of single-color stickers, a coloring book, filling in a crossword). If you can make a child understand the Bayer array and demosaicing, you understand them.

Part B — What the lens does (Shoot This)

Exercise 2.6 ⭐ — Wide and long, same spot. If you have a zoom lens or a multi-lens phone, plant your feet and photograph one subject at your widest focal length and your longest, without moving. Compare: how much of the surroundings each includes, and how large the subject appears. Name which is which without checking the EXIF.

Exercise 2.7 ⭐⭐ — Zoom with your feet. Set a single focal length (one phone lens, or tape your zoom in place) and make three good photographs of one subject using only your feet to change the framing — close, medium, far. Notice what changes about the background relationship that zooming could not have given you. (This is a sneak preview of Chapter 9.)

Exercise 2.8 ⭐⭐ — Catch digital zoom in the act. On your phone, photograph a distant sign or texture at your longest real lens step (the marked 2× or 3×), then again pinched well past it into clearly digital territory (say 8× or 10×). View both at full size on the biggest screen you have. Describe exactly what digital zoom did to the detail. Keep the comparison.

Exercise 2.9 ⭐⭐⭐ — Crop-later proof. Photograph a scene at your longest real lens. Later, on a computer or large screen, crop into it to mimic a "longer" lens. Compare that crop to a photo you took with digital zoom from the same spot in Exercise 2.8. Which gave you a better result and more flexibility? Write down what this teaches you about when to use digital zoom (almost never) versus cropping afterward.

Part C — Sensor and pipeline (Shoot This & Eye Training)

Exercise 2.10 ⭐ — Meet your noise floor. In a dim room, photograph one still scene at your lowest ISO (bracing the camera for the long exposure) and once at a very high ISO. View both at 100%. Find the noise (fine grainy speckle, worst in the shadows) in the high-ISO frame. Note the ISO at which the noise first bothers you.

Exercise 2.11 ⭐⭐ — Five ISOs, one scene. Photograph the same dim still life at five sensitivities across your camera's range (e.g. 100, 800, 3200, 6400, the maximum). Lay them out together. Write one sentence locating your personal limit — the highest ISO whose noise you'd still accept in a finished photograph. This number is worth remembering.

Exercise 2.12 ⭐⭐ — Hunt for moiré. Find a finely repeating pattern — a distant chain-link fence, a window screen, a herringbone or tweed fabric, a far-off brick wall — and photograph it. Look for the shimmering false color or wavy artifact (moiré) that demosaicing occasionally produces when detail is finer than the color filter pattern. If you find it, you've seen the Bayer array's one visible weakness with your own eyes.

Exercise 2.13 ⭐⭐⭐ — RAW vs. JPEG rescue. If your camera or phone can shoot RAW (many phones offer ProRAW or a RAW toggle), photograph a high-contrast scene — a bright window in a dim room, a sunset — in RAW + JPEG. Later, try to recover detail in the brightest and darkest areas of each file using any editor. Document how much more the RAW gave you back. If you can't shoot RAW, instead push a single JPEG's brightness up and down hard in an editor and describe where the smooth tones break into banding.

Part D — Settings reasoning (Settings Drill & Fix the Photo)

Exercise 2.14 ⭐ — RAW or JPEG? For each scenario, write RAW or JPEG and one reason: (a) snapping a menu to remember a restaurant order; (b) a once-in-a-lifetime backlit portrait at sunset; (c) burst-shooting a kid's soccer game to share that night; (d) a tricky mixed-light interior you plan to edit carefully.

Exercise 2.15 ⭐⭐ — Which camera for the job? For each person, recommend phone, mirrorless/DSLR, or "either," and defend it in a sentence: (a) a hiker who counts every gram and shoots mostly daytime landscapes for social media; (b) a parent who wants to freeze their kid's indoor sports under bad gym lighting; (c) a traveler who wants to be discreet and never miss a moment; (d) someone building a paid portrait business.

Exercise 2.16 ⭐⭐ — Fix the blur. A reader writes: "All my indoor photos of my dog come out slightly blurry, even though the focus looks right on the screen. I'm holding the phone in one hand and tapping the shutter button." Diagnose the most likely cause and prescribe three specific fixes from §2.6.

Exercise 2.17 ⭐⭐ — Fix the lost sky. A reader writes: "I shot a beautiful sunset on JPEG, and the sky just came out as a white blob with no color, no matter how I edit it." Explain why the data is likely unrecoverable, and prescribe exactly what to do differently next time.

Exercise 2.18 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the phone-zoom mush. A reader writes: "I zoomed all the way in on a deer across the field with my phone and the photo looks like a smeared painting." Explain what actually happened (name the mechanism), and prescribe two better approaches — one at capture, one after.

Part E — Holding, focus, and controls (Shoot This)

Exercise 2.19 ⭐ — The braced-vs-unbraced test. In low light, photograph the same scene twice at a slowish shutter: once holding the camera loosely at arm's length, once braced (elbows tucked, leaning on a wall, exhaling as you squeeze). Compare sharpness at 100%. The difference is free.

Exercise 2.20 ⭐⭐ — Focus on the eyes. Photograph a willing person (or a detailed object with an obvious "most important point") and deliberately place focus on the eyes by tapping or moving your focus point — then, for contrast, deliberately focus on something behind them. Compare which photo feels "right" and say why focus is a decision about meaning.

Exercise 2.21 ⭐⭐ — Tour your own mode dial. Find your camera's mode dial (or your phone's pro/manual mode). Without changing any actual settings yet, write what each position (Auto, P, A/Av, S/Tv, M, or your phone's equivalents) hands to you versus the camera. You're mapping the division of labor before Chapter 3 asks you to use it.

Exercise 2.22 ⭐⭐⭐ — One-handed sharp. Constraint: take a sharp, well-framed photo in dim light using only one hand (simulating a real situation — holding a railing, a child, a coffee). Solve it with the tools from the Accessibility box: brace against the world, use a faster shutter, a self-timer, or a stabilized mode. Document your solution. Sharpness has many honest paths.

Part F — Recreate It & Five Conditions

Exercise 2.23 ⭐⭐ — Recreate the "what my gear does" pair (the Portfolio shot). This is your Portfolio Checkpoint, done as an exercise. At your kitchen window, photograph one still subject from a fixed spot at your widest aperture and your narrowest, framing identical. Keep the pair as your permanent reference for how much blur and how much front-to-back sharpness your gear can deliver.

Exercise 2.24 ⭐⭐⭐ — One subject, five "machine" conditions. Photograph a single subject five ways, changing only a camera variable each time, and self-select the best three for what they teach: (1) widest aperture; (2) narrowest aperture; (3) shortest focal length from close; (4) longest focal length from far; (5) lowest vs. highest ISO in the same dim light. Write one line on what each condition revealed about your tool.

Exercise 2.25 ⭐⭐ — Build your spec card. From your shooting in this chapter, write a one-page "what my gear does" card for yourself: widest and narrowest aperture, focal length range (real lenses only), sensor size/type, the ISO above which noise bothers you, and whether you can shoot RAW. Tape it inside your bag or save it in your notes. Pros keep this card in their heads; you're building yours on paper.

Part G — Interleaved (mixing in Chapter 1)

Exercise 2.26 ⭐⭐ — The four decisions, with the machine underneath. Take one photograph in which you consciously make all four of Chapter 1's decisions (light, moment, frame, focus) — and write down which physical part of the camera from this chapter executes each one. Connect the creative decision to the mechanism that carries it out.

Exercise 2.27 ⭐⭐ — Same subject, gear honest. Return to the "same object, two lights" idea from Chapter 1's exercises, but add a Chapter 2 layer: shoot the object in good window light at both your widest and narrowest aperture. Now you're combining a seeing decision (the light) with a machine decision (the aperture). Which of the four images is strongest, and why?

Exercise 2.28 ⭐⭐⭐ — Teach the whole machine. Explain to someone (a friend, a journal, a camera pointed at yourself) the four jobs a camera does and how the parts carry them out — using one of your own photos from this chapter as evidence. Tie it back to Chapter 1's claim that the camera matters less than the eye: the machine is simple; the seeing is the hard part. Teaching forces clarity.

Part H — Light Log (Eye Training, no camera)

Exercise 2.29 ⭐ — Keep the Log running. Make today's Light Log entry (the habit you started in Chapter 1): two or three sentences about some light you noticed — its direction, quality, and color. The machine knowledge from this chapter is in service of this seeing; don't let the gear talk crowd out the daily noticing.

Exercise 2.30 ⭐⭐ — Predict the white balance. For three different lights today (a bulb-lit room, open shade outdoors, a fluorescent-lit shop), predict what color cast the light has before your eye corrects it — warm/orange, cool/blue, or green. This is the decision your camera's automatic white balance is making for you in the §2.4 pipeline, and Chapter 5 will hand you control of it.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 2.31 ⭐⭐⭐ — The full teardown portfolio page. Across a week, build a single comparison sheet that demonstrates everything this chapter taught, all shot on the gear you already own: (1) the widest/narrowest aperture pair; (2) a wide vs. long focal-length pair from one spot; (3) a low vs. high ISO pair in dim light; (4) a RAW-vs-JPEG rescue (or a JPEG-pushed-to-banding example); and (5) a braced-vs-unbraced sharpness pair. Lay them out with one-line captions. You will have built, with your own camera, a complete visual proof of how your tool behaves — the single most useful reference a photographer owns, and proof that you understand the machine before you ever blamed it.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Try each with a camera in hand before reading them — in photography, the attempt is the lesson, and the machine only reveals itself when you push its buttons.