It Can Help Improve Your Technical Skills
In some ways, I’m a hoarder.
I have lots of “stuff” from my youth and earlier years stored away in boxes in the basement. The other day I was trying to locate an older photograph so was digging through a few cartons. I didn’t locate the photo, but I had another interesting find – this Memorandum.
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Users of early model “Kodaks” – as the early cameras were called – were encouraged to record their exposure data for each photograph in this small booklet.
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| Part of the booklet contains detailed guidelines for determining the proper exposure.
In particular there are the STOPS – today we refer to these as the aperture and the TIME – the shutter speed. Depending on the lighting conditions and by following these guidelines, the photographer would be able to produce an acceptable photograph with the Kodak. |
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| In the other pages of the the booklet, the photographer was to record the exact conditions and settings for each of the 100 exposures. | |
| Take a look at the date!
Yes, this booklet was published in the late 1800’s (click to enlarge the illustration). Might I suggest that this booklet is a predecessor to today’s EXIF metadata. Why was it so important to record the exposure data? In short – to minimize the cost of photography. …introduced in 1888 (No.2 Kodak) which had a built-in 100-exposure paper roll film costing $25, a huge amount. The box camera had to be sent back to the factory once all the exposures had been used. The customers got their cameras back with new film roll loaded into it, and the image prints. Historical information from Wikia |
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Back then, each photograph cost a very expensive 25 cents. So it was wise for the photographer to carefully review the prints and corresponding exposure information to improve subsequent photographs.
| Today, the cost for an in-camera photograph is virtually free. But we can still improve our photography by reviewing the exif data – the information that is automatically recorded with each captured image.
Most image editing software shows the exif data alongside the photograph. As a quick example, below you can see that the young child on the right is slightly out of focus. The exif data tells me that image was captured using an aperture of f/4.0. For the follow up photo, to insure that both children are in focus, I should use a smaller aperture e.g. f/5.6. |
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I frequently take this cue from the pioneer photographers of the 19th century and wisely use this metadata to improve my photography.
I’ll have more examples in a future article.
Written by Arnie Lee
