Wyoming Cloudy Landscape

Photography Quiz Number 1

In the first two articles in this series, we’ve covered a lot of material, and it can be hard to tell whether you really understand something until you’re tested.

With that in mind, I’ve come up with a quiz. Some of the questions are pretty easy, and some are more difficult. It’s not timed, though, and you can use any tools that you’d like (you can open a second browser window to the 3 Basics and the F-Stop articles, for example). So, don’t think of this as a real test; it’s just another way to learn. If everything is working properly, some of the answers will have feedback, too… so you’ll get tips as you go.

The quiz below will choose 5 questions from a pool of 15, so if you take the quiz a few time, you should still get some fresh questions.

So, if you feel like it, give it a try! Nobody will see your score. If this dredges up memories of high-school pop-quizzes, then feel free to ignore it and move on to something else.

Good luck!

[mtouchquiz id=1 questions=5]
Editor-in-Chief
  1. Hi Matt,

    i bought my DSLR Canon 600D yesterday and happened to land on your website after some basic googling.

    Have found your articles to be very informative. Tried your quiz too and liked it. Shall come back after trying out my hand based on some basics i picked up here on Shutter speed, Aperture and ISO.

    Thanks a ton
    Bikram

    1. Hi Pedro,

      I’ll certainly add it to my list of things to do :) I’m trying to finish up a couple of other projects before I head up to New York for the PhotoPlus Expo, but I’ll see what I can do next week :)

      – Matthew

  2. I got 3/5 correct in first attempt. 5/5 in second attempt. not bad for a beginner. but the quiz is good way learning. thanks for putting things to understand easy

  3. This is still very new to me, these 3 basic, so this is actually very helpful.  I got 3 right the first time so I took it again and got 4 right without cheating either time.  So, I’m on a roll!  Thanks Matt!!!

    1. Glad to hear that this is still useful; I almost decided not to move it over when I moved the site to a new server last month :) I think it’s a handy format.

      Anyway, 4 out of 5 is pretty good :) As you’ve probably already seen, you should be able to retake the quiz another time, at least, and still get some fresh questions, so after you’ve given this stuff some practice in the real world, you can always come back again and see if you can ace it!

      – Matthew

       

    1. Thanks :) There will undoubtedly be more quizzes in the future, particularly if it seems that people are trying this one. I’m always curious to hear what kinds of questions and topics you’d like to hear more about, though.

      – Matt

      1. I’ve learned in the last year that sometimes you really have to think fast if you’re going to get a shot and you don’t want to buckle under the pressure and use the little green square… I’d love to see more of the “how would you get this shot?’ types of questions. It would be a great way to test yourself and see if you would have “got the shot” or if you would have hemmed and hawed around and missed it.

        Along the same lines, I believe a really cool feature for the site would be a “How would you shoot this..” section. It would be great to have a section that would promote some discussion on photos and what could be done to make them better, from initial composition, settings, and lighting right up through photoshop and a finished product. Just a thought… :)

        If you decide to do this, let me know. I have tons of crappy photos that I would volunteer for a critique. :D

        Jason

        1. So, I’ve been giving this idea of a “How Would You Have Done It?” section a little more thought. I had originally been thinking that it would make more sense to have a forum section for this kind of thing, but I’ll be getting rid of this forum software soon, and I also like the idea of having it be a little more prominent anyway, from the front page of the site.

          The drawback to that, of course, is that I’d have to start each post (or have an editor do it), and commenting is a little less flexible in the main part of the site (which I could change, i suppose). This way, though, we wouldn’t get flooded with shots for critique, we could all focus on one or two that I’d choose per week.

          What do you guys think? (As you may or may not know, any of you can create a new “Group” in the forum system here, so you don’t really need me to do that).

          1. Just to be clear… I’ll be replacing this forum software with another type, not just getting rid of it altogether… but I may lose all forum posts up to the present.

            1. I can give you a hand if you want to try to retain the posts. I converted my personal site from MyPHPNuke to WordPress a couple of years ago. The majority of the complexity was the users (and authentication). I don’t remember the SQL to export/import the posts being that difficult.

              1. Thanks, I may take you up on that. For the moment, I’m hoping that they’ll produce the conversion software that they’re promising by the time that I get back to FL.

          2. My initial thought was something a bit more prominent too. It would be a neat feature for the site. You have a great idea about just selecting a couple photos to go over, otherwise there will be all kinds of pics popping up and it will get crazy.

            I thought of this after I had shot a model awhile back in a sketchy location. Afterwards I posted an unedited pic for laughs and I commented on how happy I was that I didn’t get shot. I was going to crop it, but leave the cool light of the pic basically as it was. It was crummy weather that day and the light reflected that. Matt suggested some different ideas that I tried and it really improved the pic. Afterwards, it got me thinking of how two brains are better than one and what a learning opportunity something like that could be.

            I’m excited to see this being implemented. :)

        2. OK Guys, I’m getting ready to start creating this section. This is my official CALL FOR PHOTOS that you’d like to get a little feedback about. Obviously this means that photos that didn’t work out quite as you’d intended are best…. either in the the field/studio, or in Photoshop.

          I suppose I could have two separate sections here…. one for shooting and one for post processing, but I will probably keep them combined for now. I’m still not really sure how all of this is going to work :)

          Email me any submissions: matthew@lightandmatter.org . If you can make raw files available, that’s ideal. If my email rejects them, let me know and I’ll set up a drop-box somewhere.

          – Matthew

          1. No replies… I guess this is on me to be the guinea pig since I brought it all up…. Okay, I’ll pic one out and fire it off to you. Finding a bad picture isn’t going to be hard at all… finding one that doesn’t make me look like a blithering idiot is going to be the challenge. :)

            1. This is harder than I thought it would be… It’s funny because my first degree was in architecture and I spent a couple years up to my neck in classes that taught design, proportions, lighting, eye appeal, etc… and so much of it goes hand in hand with photography. As an engineer I picked up how to be technical. I’m looking through these pics now and on almost every single one of them, what I should have done differently is jumping out at me plain as day. I guess it goes back to what I mentioned earlier about practicing thinking on the fly and knowing what to do in various situations where you don’t have a lot of time to ponder things.

              I’m coming across two main themes here. One is pictures that don’t quite follow the “rules” and I can not decide if I like them or hate them, and the other is me wondering what someone with strong post processing skills could do with an image that to me is really just kind of blah and doesn’t do a whole lot for me. I spend too much time in front of a computer so I strive to do everything “in camera” as a result, my post skills are nothing to brag about.

              An example of the first type is on my album page (actually several of the pics I posted on there I can’t decide if I like or hate so I put them up to get some feedback) It’s the two boys on the bridge. I snapped off a quick one while I was waiting for them to come over for a closer shot. I was checking the exposure more than anything and later when I saw it, I liked it. Then later I looked at it again and almost deleted it. Just curious what others honestly think.

              The second I’ll post in my album and note it. I’ll send you the raw file Matt. I shot it and thought it should have been better than it was. It just does nothing for me and I’m wondering if some post-processing skills could perk it up a bit.

              I’ll look forward to some honest feedback.

            2. Hey Jason,

              Take your time; it’s still going to be a while before I’ll even have the time to get started, and I may very end up having other submissions…. :)

              – Matt

               

              1. That’s just about a perfect photo for this…. a really nice image, but maybe not quite perfect. If you can email me a larger version, I’d appreciate it. If you can’t get that to go through, I’ll set up a drop box… I’ll need to do that at some point anyway.

          2. I’m glad it works. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it, I just snapped it off and afterwards I had wished I would have taken my time. It will be interesting to see what gets done, how you do it, and if it can be saved. I tried emailing it but I guess it was too big. I’m on a satellite and the weather is less than perfect, later today I’ll have a better connection and will try again, but we may need that second option.

              1. Okay Matt. You’ve got the raw file now. :)

                We definitely need a section for crappy pics…lol. I deleted that jpeg from my album. That’s such a terrible picture, I didn’t want anyone to actually think that I liked it and wanted it in my L&M album…

    1. Just got 100%. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure on a couple of them though. The f/45 question I thought might have been a trick question, since I’ve never seen f/45. On the “one stop less than f/4, I was pretty sure it was 5.6 because I wasn’t used to seeing 4.5 on my camera. I double checked that one at http://www.uscoles.com/fstop.htm before answering. I stumbled across that site several months ago looking for an explanation on f-stops. He explains the math behind 1.2, 2.0, 2.8 and why they aren’t 1.2, 2.4, 4.8, etc.

      I started to take it the other day and got interrupted, but the first question was different and tripped me up a little. I think it had something to do with being in a dimly lit dark room at 800 ISO and I wasn’t exactly sure if going to say 1600 ISO was going to do it. I remember thinking I might need to select multiple answers on that one to get the right exposure.

      1. There is currently a pool of about 15 questions, and 5 are randomly chosen each time. Some of the questions do have multiple correct answers. :)

        I actually explained a bit of the math in the footnotes to the last article in this series, too, but didn’t expect anyone to really pay much attention to it. For remembering the series of apertures, I think it’s helpful to remember that there are basically two doubling series combined… so there’s one series that goes f1.4 , 2.8, 5.6, 11, 22, 45, etc (with the decimals rounded above f5.6) and the other that goes f2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. When you combine the two, you get the series of full f-stops: 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6 etc.

        Some of the questions actually leave a little room for interpretation; if I were actually grading the quiz, I’d re-write them to have clearer answers, but I think it’s a better exercise if it requires a little more thought.
        – Matt

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