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Music, art & photography · course 87 of 105

Camera Exposure Without Auto Mode

Take your camera off auto: aperture, shutter speed and ISO counted in stops, trading one for another, freezing or blurring motion, soft backgrounds and low light.

4 modules

Try a question

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Runs in Claude (claude.ai, the Claude apps or Claude Code) with your own Claude account. A course opens there as soon as your payment goes through; nothing is shipped.

Preview

What it teaches

How aperture, shutter speed and ISO set the brightness of a photo, counted in stops: how to trade one setting for another and keep the same exposure, how to read EV, the sunny 16 rule, exposure compensation, and the creative choices: freeze or blur motion, a soft background or sharp front-to-back, and low light without a shaky photo. The AI asks 3 questions, places you, shows a short card per module, then gives you one setting problem at a time and checks your answer against keys computed by script, naming the mistake when it’s a common one (“a bigger f-number is a smaller opening”).

How long

39 items. About 35-50 rounds plus a 12-item final: 2-3 sessions (estimate, not timed with a real student). The tutor gives a one-line save code at the end of each session.

The modules

4 modules, drilled one item at a time.

  1. M0

    The words

    Concept questions

  2. M1

    Counting stops

    Stops

  3. M2

    Same exposure, different settings

    Equivalents, EV, Sunny 16

  4. M3

    Creative choices and fixes

    Scenarios

Before it teaches, it asks

  1. 1
    What camera do you shoot with (a phone counts: on most phones only the shutter and ISO rules apply), and do you shoot in auto or manual? What goes wrong most: too dark, too bright, or blurry?
    AI voice (ElevenLabs)
  2. 2
    You change from f/2.8 to f/5.6. How many stops, and more or less light?
  3. 3
    f/8 at 1/250 gives the right exposure. You open up to f/5.6. Which shutter speed keeps the same exposure?

What’s exact, and what isn’t

Show

Straight from the course’s own notes.

Computed by script
Every key, on the standard full-stop scales; every EV is cross-checked against the exact formula EV = log2(N²/t) using the numbers as marked on the camera (f/11, not f/11.3); 14 of the 23 listed wrong answers are reproduced by applying the slip to the numbers.
Sourced
Definitions and rules from Wikipedia (Exposure value, F-number, Sunny 16 rule, Film speed, Depth of field, Shutter speed, Exposure compensation), 19 short quotes matched word for word on the live pages on 2026-10-10.
Simplified on purpose
Full stops only (cameras also use thirds, which work the same way in smaller steps; an answer one third-stop off gets one retry, except in the final test); the sunny 16 rule is a rule of thumb.
Honest limit
The tutor can’t see your photos. Describe the settings and the problem and it applies the same rules. On most phones the aperture is fixed, so only the shutter and ISO parts apply.
Not in it yet
Third stops, flash, metering modes, white balance, focus, composition, editing.