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Fall 2007 Archive

Spring 2008 Course Information

Last updated 2007 December 12

The Digital Photo DeCal is a course intended to introduce students to the world photography. Building off of the first class last semester, the Digital Photo DeCal will offer three sections in Spring 2008, catering to different levels of experience, equipment capability, and areas of interest, whether they be basic ("Hey, let's take pretty pictures!"), advanced ("So *that's* how you get that bokeh effect"), or design ("Screw Bayer! I want my Foveon sensor now!").

Directory
-Section Descriptions
  -Basic Photo
  -Advanced Photo
  -Engineering Photo
-Enrollment Information
-Workload
-Which section should I take?
-What kind of equipment do I need?
  -Basic Photo
  -Advanced Photo
  -Engineering Photo

Section Descriptions

Basic Photo: This section is intended for photographers of all levels who are simply interested in taking photos and learning through experience. Each week we'll cover a different area of photography (portraits, architecture, macro, etc.) - we'll look at some of the best and some of the worst, discuss techniques, try some shooting on our own (weekly assignment), and review and discuss everyone's photos the subsequent week. There will also be several guest speakers throughout the semester, who will give presentations on certain areas of their expertise (if you're interested in being a guest speaker, let me know!). The class will be 1 unit, and will meet once a week for 1 hour. A camera of some sort will be required for this class.

Here are the areas of photography I'm planning to cover. However, a large portion of the course will be determined by the areas of photography you want to learn about/explore. Feel free to email me with any suggestions if you have anything you particularly want to learn about.

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Advanced Photo: Advanced Photo will bring a mix of both photographic and technical instruction - beyond simply experimenting with the aesthetic aspects of photography, this section will delve into the technology behind photography. By understanding the exact mechanisms that produce effects such as noise, blur, or depth of field, photographers can learn to control aspects of a photograph, rather than simply following cause-effect rules. The class will involve lots of hands-on activities - most weeks will involve a lab demo, in addition to weekly assignments and review/discussion of photos. The class will be 2 units, and will meet once a week for 2 hours. Note that a digital SLR will be required for this class. Prior experience with photography is helpful but not necessary.

Topics we'll cover:

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Engineering Photo: Like java and scheme boil down to machine code, like bio and chem boil down to plain physics, the high-level of photography boils down simple mechanisms, inputs and outputs of the camera system. This section will focus on the various technical aspects and ins and outs of how camera systems work to convert light into images. Each week we'll take a look at a certain aspect of the camera - autofocus systems, color filtration, sources of image noise, etc. One student will be assigned each week to research and do a presentation on the topic, and we'll also have the occasional hands-on demo. The class will be 1 unit, and will meet once a week for 1 hour. No camera is required for this class. A good grasp of calculus (derivatives and integrals) and basic physics is helpful, but not necessary.

Topics we'll definitely cover. In addition, I'll likely take suggestions during the semester on what else you want to learn.

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Enrollment Information

While I'd like to allow as many students who are interested to join, I've learned from last semester that this just isn't a good idea - large classes become unwieldly, force the instruction into a lecture format, and are generally too intimidating and formal for good questions, discussion, and interaction. As such, class enrollment will be limited to the following:

Basic Section: 25 students
Advanced Section: 30 students
Engineering Section: 30 students

You will need to attend a mandatory special meeting during the first week of class (tentatively scheduled for Thursday, January 24th, 7-8pm, location TBD). There will be a short questionnaire/application to fill out - check back here or on the decal website for details.

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Workload

I should note that the workload for this class will be pretty intensive compared to most DeCals, especially for the Advanced section. As a 2-unit class, my goal is for this class to be half as rigorous as a typical 4-unit EECS class. Here's a rough idea of the workload you can expect for each class.

Basic section: 1 hour of instruction a week, involving some lecture, guest presentations, and photo discussion. There will be a weekly field assignment, which will likely take 1-3 hours, and online photo discussion, taking about 1 hour a week.

Advanced section: 2 hour of instruction a week, involving some lecture, photo discussion, and hands-on lab activities. There may be weekly quizzes and lab reports (will definitely be decided before beginning of the semester). There will be a weekly field assignment which will likely take 2-4 hours, and online photo discussion, taking about 1 hour a week.

Engineering section: 1 hour of instruction a week, involving some lecture, student presentation, and hands-on lab activities. One student will be assigned each week to do research and give a presentation, which will likely take 4-6 hours that week. There will also be a creative final project at the end of the semester.

In the end, the work you do really depends on how much you want to get out of the class. In other photo classes you might easily spend 6-8 hours a week taking photos and working in the darkroom to develop them. At the same time, you could slack off and only spend 1-2 hours a week on the same class, and still get a passing grade. You won't learn much, however. It will be the same for this class (and really, any class you take here) - everyone should have no problem passing the class, but you're not going to get much out of it unless you can spend the time to work and learn.

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Which section should I take?

I've gotten this question a lot, so here's what I'd recommend:

If you just want to learn how to take good photos, take the Basic section. Despite its name, this will focus much more on actual photography. I would also strongly recommend this if you have zero prior experience with photography. This section will involve a lot more taking photos and judging their aesthetic quality, rather than analyzing them from a technical standpoint.

If you're interested in photography, know some of the basics (key question: what are aperture, shutter speed, and exposure?), and want to learn more advanced techniques or how to take advantage of your equipment, take the Advanced section. This section will teach how a camera works, which is what seperates someone who takes photographs and someone who actually understands photography. Most photographers - including many professionals - operate with an extremely simplistic understanding of the craft; cause-effect relationships like "higher ISO means more noise" are easy enough to memorize and operate under, but actually understanding the sources of noise and what high ISO does under the hood allow you to derive your own rules, and invent and build on your own techniques, rather than living by combinations of various (and at times incorrect) "conventional wisdom".

If you're really interested in the technology behind camera systems, especially if you lack the interest in photography (as opposed to imaging) or the equipment needed for the Advanced section, take the Engineering section. As only a 2nd year student, I can't profess to be an expert on the engineering side, so rather than being mostly lecture or presentation, much of the learning will actually come from your own and your peers' research and presentation. This course will be a bit experimental, but at the very least it should be a great opportunity and catalyst for your own interest in digital imaging or optical/electrical engineering.

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What kind of equipment do I need?

Note: the following is purely my opinion. You can take it from someone who is fairly familiar with photographic equipment and what tools are useful for photography students, but don't put any more validity or blind faith in my recommendations than that.

I've received a few emails about this and can't stress it enough: you do not need to run out and buy fancy equipment for this class. If you've got any kind of digital camera you can fully participate in the Basic section, and if you've got any digital SLR paired with any lens, you can fully participate in the Advanced section.

If anything, over the course of this class you will come to understand the different attributes of equipment, and what their uses are (especially in the Advanced section) - by the end of the class you will undoubtedly have a better idea of what your equipment does and what you want your next piece of gear to be, if any.

However, there are those of you who were planning on a new camera or equipment purchase anyway and have asked me for advice, so here it is.

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Basic section
Any kind of camera will do for this class. However, the following features will be useful to a) give you better photos, and b) allow you to learn more in this class.

Access to Adobe Photoshop and/or Windows will also be useful for some software excercises, but not required.

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Advanced section
If you're buying a digital SLR body, you've actually got a big task ahead of you. You can do some research on websites such as dcresource or dpreview (feel free to email me as well). The best general advice I can give is:

Note: I wrote this up for a student. This is probably more succinct and cuts to the chase quicker. I've left the original comments below, so you can still read that and possibly gain some more insight.

Digital SLRs are getting fairly inexpensive these days (compared to what they used to be). If you are interested in getting into photography, I'd highly recommend getting one instead of a point and shoot camera. It has nothing to do with image quality - there are just things you can do and entire avenues of photography that can't be explored without an SLR camera.

There are five "systems" for Digital SLRs: Nikon, Canon, Pentax/Samsung, Olympus/Panasonic, Sony/Konica Minolta. I would only consider Nikon, Canon, or Pentax/Samsung because they are far, far more affordable for students.

The entry level cameras are the Pentax K100D, Canon Rebel XT, and the Nikon D40. I would highly discourage you from the Nikon D40 camera - it's crippled in a number of ways, most notably in autofocus incompatibility with several important "prime lenses", severely restricting its usefulness for students who are learning photography. If you want to go with the Nikon system, there is an older D50 model - it's no longer in production but if you can find one used or refurbished it's a very capable camera.

It will cost you $450-600 on the low end for the cheapest model, which is really all you need. If you want to shoot sports or wildlife photography, the requirements are a bit trickier, but for everything else, any of this equipment will be all you need:

Pentax K100D - $390
Pentax 18-55 lens - $80
Total: $470
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000G1DAKA/sr=8-7/qid=1197578834/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1197578834&sr=8-7
http://www.amazon.com/Pentax-18-55mm-3-5-5-6-Samsung-Digital/dp/B00061J2BQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1197578903&sr=8-1

Canon Rebel XT and 18-55 lens - $460
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-4504038-1556751?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=canon+rebel+xt&x=0&y=0

Canon Rebel XT - $400
Canon 18-55 IS lens - $175
Total: $575
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Digital-Rebel-XT-Camera/dp/B0007QKMSC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1197578967&sr=8-4 http://www.amazon.com/Canon-EF-S-18-55mm-3-5-5-6-Lens/dp/B000V5K3FG/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1197579027&sr=1-1

If you want to go with Nikon, you can probably find a used D50 body for ~$400, then add this lens:

Nikon 18-55 - $120
http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-18-55mm-3-5-5-6G-AF-S-Nikkor/dp/B000LWJ1ES/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1197579216&sr=1-1

As for which one to go for, this is somewhat subjective. I can tell you that all three cameras (K100D, Rebel XT, D50) are all very good cameras with similar capabilities and image quality. The real differentiator is the system itself - what lenses and such are available for each camera system. However, you can't get a good feel for this before investing in an SLR and using it for a while - there is no "best" system because it's really based on the kind of photography you want to pursue, and your style of shooting. My recommendation would be to try going down to a store (Fry's, Best Buy, maybe a camera store), and try handling the camera for yourself - if you find that one of the models "feels" right in your hands, and its handling/controls are intuitive, just go with that one. As long as you don't heavily invest yourself into equipment, if you decide to switch systems after having more experience, you can sell your old equipment without much loss (you might lose ~20% or less).

I use Canon equipment personally, but this is mostly for the options at the higher-end. If you really want a recommendation, I would suggest the Rebel XT + 18-55 IS ($575) lens if you can afford it, just because you'll have the very useful image stabilization feature and the 18-55 IS lens is an enormously better lens than the regular 18-55 kit lens. If not then either the Pentax K100D and 18-55 or Canon Rebel XT and 18-55 are priced similarly and will perform about the same - you can certainly learn just as much photography with either of these cheaper kits. However, I would strongly recommend you simply try out the cameras at a store and just go by what feels best - the image quality and feature differences are fairly small, and you'll be able to learn photography equally well with any of them.

If you want to search around for a used camera, you can probably find it for somewhat cheaper. I have seen a few Rebel XT bodies go for ~$300 so you could save yourself about $100 there. Craigslist is a good place to look. Another good place to search is buy/sell forums on photography websites. These three are very good places to visit:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=14
^-you will need to create an account to see the forum
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/board/10
http://photo.net/gc/domain-multi
^-not sure if this link is correct; go to Community->classifieds

However, be sure to exercise proper precaution to make sure you don't get scammed. If you're buying locally, meet with the person during the daytime in a public place, and bring a friend if you can. I would thoroughly inspect the camera as well. If you're buying online on one of the photography forums, check the user's feedback (there are feedback threads that you can search), and pay through paypal using a credit card - this way you can call your credit card company to stop the funds if things go wrong.

Original tips: Mostly redundant to the information above

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Engineering section
You won't need any sort of camera for this class, although if you do happen to have one it may come in handy for some of the in-class demos, and you could always use it to start applying the things you've learned in class to... actual photography!

You will probably want some kind of presentation software (MS PowerPoint) to create your presentations for the class, but that's about it. The open-source OpenOffice.org is an adequate alternative.

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