Chapter 3 — Exercises

Exposure is learned by setting it — over and over, with intent — until the triangle becomes reflex. Most of these exercises put a camera in your hands and ask you to trade stops on purpose; the rest sharpen your ability to read an exposure and diagnose a broken one. A phone in a pro/manual app works for almost all of them; where it can't (real aperture changes), the exercise says so and gives a path. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do the starred and odd-numbered ones at minimum; model answers and critiques for those are in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep what you shoot — one of these frames becomes your Manual-exposure keeper.

A standing note for every "Shoot This": review your take honestly — shoot more than you keep, keep the best few, and be able to say why.

Part A — Thinking in stops (Settings Drill)

Exercise 3.1 ⭐ — Count the doublings. Without a camera, answer in stops: (a) You let in 8× more light — how many stops? (b) Your image is 1/4 as bright as you want — how many stops too dark? (c) You go from ISO 200 to ISO 1600 — how many stops? (d) You change the shutter from 1/30 s to 1/240 s — roughly how many stops, and which way? Show your reasoning as a chain of doublings/halvings.

Exercise 3.2 ⭐ — Read the three scales. For each, say which setting lets in MORE light and by how many stops: (a) f/2.8 vs. f/8; (b) 1/1000 s vs. 1/125 s; (c) ISO 100 vs. ISO 800. Then state the side effect that comes with the brighter choice in each case.

Exercise 3.3 ⭐⭐ — Hold the brightness. You meter a scene at f/5.6, 1/250 s, ISO 200, and it's correct. Write three different settings combinations that produce the exact same brightness, and for each, name how the look changes (depth of field, motion, noise). Prove each is equivalent by showing the stops cancel.

Exercise 3.4 ⭐⭐ — Rebalance for a new priority. Start from f/5.6, 1/250 s, ISO 200 (correct). (a) You now want a much blurrier background — change the aperture by three stops toward wide and rebalance one other control so brightness holds; write the new trio. (b) Instead, you now want to freeze a fast bird — change the shutter to 1/2000 s and rebalance; write the new trio. State which control you moved to compensate and why.

Exercise 3.5 ⭐⭐⭐ — The impossible exposure. You're indoors at dusk. You want f/2.8 (already wide open — your lens goes no wider), 1/200 s (to stay sharp handheld), and the meter still reads two stops underexposed at ISO 1600. List every option you have, in order of preference, and name the trade each one costs. Then pick the one you'd actually use and defend it.

Part B — Aperture and depth of field (Shoot This)

Exercise 3.6 ⭐ — Walk the aperture scale. Pick a subject with something clearly behind it (a mug with a bookshelf behind, a friend in a park). If your camera has aperture control, shoot the same framing at your widest aperture, a middle one, and your narrowest, in Aperture-priority. Lay the three side by side and watch the background sharpen as the f-number climbs. (Phone-only: you can't change real aperture — instead shoot one frame normally and one in Portrait mode, and note where the fake blur looks convincing and where it smears an edge it shouldn't.)

Exercise 3.7 ⭐⭐ — Isolate, then contextualize. Photograph one subject two ways with intent: (a) wide aperture, background fully dissolved, subject floating free; (b) narrow aperture, subject sharp and its surroundings sharp, so the place is part of the story. Keep both. Write one sentence on what each version says that the other doesn't.

Exercise 3.8 ⭐⭐⭐ — The red door, two apertures. Find your own "red door" — any textured subject in front of a deeper background. Recreate Figure 3.3: shoot it at your widest aperture (background dissolved, any distant point light blooming soft) and at a narrow aperture (door, surroundings, and the distant detail all crisp). Note how many stops you had to give back on the shutter to keep the two frames the same brightness. This is your red-door exposure entry; you'll revisit this same subject many times.

Part C — Shutter speed and motion (Shoot This / Five Conditions)

Exercise 3.9 ⭐ — Freeze and blur the same thing. Find running water (a tap, a fountain, a stream) or any repeating motion. In Shutter-priority, shoot it frozen (1/1000 s+) and then silky/streaked (1/4 s or slower — brace or prop the camera). Same subject, two truths about time. Keep both.

Exercise 3.10 ⭐⭐ — Find your handheld floor. Pick a still subject and a focal length. Handhold and shoot at progressively slower shutter speeds — 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8 — keeping the framing identical (let ISO rise to hold brightness). Zoom in to 100% on each and find the slowest speed that's still acceptably sharp. That's your personal handheld floor for that focal length; compare it to the 1/(focal length) rule of thumb.

Exercise 3.11 ⭐⭐ — Panning the intersection. Go to a busy street (one of the book's four locations). Set 1/30–1/60 s. As a cyclist, car, or runner passes left-to-right, follow them smoothly with the camera and fire mid-pan. The goal: subject relatively sharp, background streaked into motion. It takes many tries — shoot 30, expect to keep 2 or 3. Keep your best and note what your body did differently on the successful frames.

Exercise 3.12 ⭐⭐⭐ — Five shutter speeds, one moment. Pick one kind of motion (a dog shaking, a child on a swing, traffic at a light). Photograph it at five different shutter speeds spanning fast-freeze to deliberate-blur. From the five, self-select the single best one for what the motion feels like — not the sharpest, the most expressive. Defend your choice in two sentences.

Part D — ISO and noise (Shoot This / Eye Training)

Exercise 3.13 ⭐ — Climb the ISO ladder. In a dim indoor corner, shoot a still subject at ISO 100, 400, 1600, and your camera's maximum, identical framing, letting shutter/aperture hold the brightness. Zoom into the shadows of each and find the ISO where the grain first bothers you. Write that number down — it's your personal high-ISO ceiling.

Exercise 3.14 ⭐⭐ — Noisy-but-sharp beats clean-but-blurry. In genuinely dim light, photograph a moving subject (a person gesturing, a pet) two ways: (a) ISO low, shutter forced slow — accept the motion blur; (b) ISO raised high enough to use a sharp shutter speed — accept the grain. Compare. Decide which you'd keep and articulate the principle behind your choice.

Exercise 3.15 ⭐⭐ — Auto ISO with a ceiling. Set your camera to Auto ISO with a sensible maximum (say ISO 6400) and a minimum shutter speed. Shoot the same subject moving from bright light into shade and watch the ISO climb on its own to hold your shutter speed. Note the value it lands on in each light. Where does Auto ISO free you, and where might it overrule a choice you'd rather make yourself?

Part E — Metering, compensation, the histogram (Fix the Photo / Read the Frame)

Exercise 3.16 ⭐ — Defeat the meter (bright). Find a scene dominated by bright tones — a sunlit white wall, snow, sand, a pale sky. Shoot at the meter's 0, then at +1.5 stops of exposure compensation. Compare, and check both histograms. Confirm the meter's version sits dull-grey and the corrected one holds true white without clipping.

Exercise 3.17 ⭐ — Defeat the meter (dark). Find a scene dominated by dark tones — a dim room, a dark object against shade. Shoot at 0, then at −1.5 stops. Confirm the meter tried to wash the darkness to grey and your correction kept it moody, with the histogram weighted left but not crushed against the wall.

Exercise 3.18 ⭐⭐ — Read the histogram cold. Without looking at the images, just the histograms: for each of three of your own shots, predict whether it's underexposed, overexposed, well-exposed, clipping highlights, or clipping shadows — then open the image and check. Write down where you guessed right and where the histogram surprised you.

Exercise 3.19 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the Photo: the grey snow. A described failed shot: "A snowy park at midday. Settings: Aperture-priority, f/8, the camera chose 1/2000 s, ISO 100, no exposure compensation. The snow came out a flat dull grey; the histogram is bunched in the left-center with a gap against the right wall." Diagnose exactly why it failed and prescribe the specific re-shoot — settings and reasoning. Then go shoot the corrected version if you have snow, sand, or a white wall available.

Exercise 3.20 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the Photo: the lost sunset. A described failed shot: "A sunset over water. The photographer wanted the glowing sky but exposed for the dark foreground rocks, so the rocks look fine but the entire sky is a featureless white patch; the histogram shows a tall spike slammed against the right wall." Diagnose what was clipped and why it can't be recovered, then prescribe the re-shoot (think about what to expose for and how to check it before walking away).

Part F — Manual mode and the triangle (Shoot This)

Exercise 3.21 ⭐⭐ — One scene, three equivalent exposures. In full Manual, shoot one scene three ways at the same brightness (confirm with the meter): (1) wide aperture / fast shutter / low ISO; (2) narrow aperture / slow shutter / low ISO (brace or tripod); (3) middle aperture / high ISO. Verify all three read correct on the meter. Compare the depth of field, motion, and noise across them. This is the core triangle drill — do it until it's boring.

Exercise 3.22 ⭐⭐ — Manual, priority-led. Choose a scene where one side effect clearly matters. In Manual: set your priority control first, set ISO as low as the light allows, then dial the third control until the meter reads 0. Shoot. Then deliberately set the meter to +1 and −1 and shoot those too. Keep the one that looks right to you and note how it differs from the meter's "correct."

Exercise 3.23 ⭐⭐⭐ — Manual in changing light. Find a subject that moves between sun and shade (or photograph a friend who walks from one to the other). Set a fixed Manual exposure for the sunlit spot and don't change it. Shoot the subject in the sun (correct), then in the shade (now underexposed). Now do the reverse — expose for shade, shoot both. Experience why a priority mode would "helpfully" re-meter each frame and why Manual's stability is sometimes exactly what you want.

Exercise 3.24 ⭐⭐⭐ — The Manual keeper (Portfolio). This is the chapter's Portfolio Checkpoint, formalized as an exercise. Make one image, fully Manual, where your aperture, shutter, and ISO each have a deliberate reason, the exposure is exactly as you intended (histogram clean, nothing important clipped), and one side effect is doing real creative work. Save it as 03-manual-exposure with the three settings and a one-line rationale for each.

Part G — Eye training (no camera required)

Exercise 3.25 ⭐ — Stops in the wild (Light Log). For one day, each time you move between two spaces, estimate the brightness difference in stops (the office vs. the hallway; outside vs. inside; sun vs. shade). You won't be exact — that's fine. You're training your eye to think in doublings. Note three estimates in your log.

Exercise 3.26 ⭐⭐ — Predict the meter's mistake. Walking around, spot three scenes where you predict a camera's meter would get the exposure wrong (very bright or very dark overall), and for each say which way it'd err and how much compensation you'd dial in. No camera — just the prediction. Confidence here is a real professional skill.

Exercise 3.27 ⭐⭐ — Reverse-engineer the exposure. Find three photographs (yours or others') with obvious depth-of-field, motion, or noise characteristics. For each, deduce what the photographer likely prioritized and roughly what settings they used: shallow focus → wide aperture; frozen splash → fast shutter; grainy concert → high ISO. Write your reasoning.

Part H — Interleaved (mixing earlier chapters)

Exercise 3.28 ⭐⭐ — Light first, then expose (Ch. 1 + 3). Combine the eye and the triangle: find genuinely good light (Chapter 1's lesson — get it off the front of your subject), then make a deliberate Manual exposure of a subject in it. The point is sequence: see the light first, choose the exposure second. Keep the frame and note which decision you made first.

Exercise 3.29 ⭐⭐ — The four decisions, now with settings (Ch. 1 + 3). Repeat Chapter 1's "deliberate photograph," but this time also make all three exposure decisions consciously. Say all four creative decisions (light, moment, frame, focus) and your three settings out loud before pressing the shutter. Notice how the technical and creative decisions interlock rather than compete.

Exercise 3.30 ⭐⭐⭐ — Sensor size meets ISO (Ch. 2 + 3). If you have access to two cameras with different sensor sizes (e.g. a phone and a larger camera), shoot the same dim scene on both at the same high ISO and compare the noise. If you only have one, shoot the same scene at the camera's base ISO and at a very high ISO and reason about how a larger sensor would change the high-ISO result. Connect what you see to Chapter 2's claim that sensor size beats megapixel count for low-light quality.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 3.31 ⭐⭐⭐ — A week in Manual. For seven days, shoot only in full Manual — no Auto, no priority modes, no excuses. Each day, before each important frame, state your priority and set the triangle deliberately. At week's end, lay out your seven best frames and note how much faster the setting decisions got from day one to day seven. By the end the triangle should feel less like arithmetic and more like reaching for a light switch in a familiar room.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Attempt each with a camera (or, for the eye-training ones, with your eyes) before reading them — in photography, the attempt is the lesson.