You Can Learn All you Need to Know Quickly by Reading the Instruction Manual
When I first started reading about taking a light-meter reading and setting the correct shutter and f/stop combination on the Yashica 44, I was confused because it appeared that all of the combinations were correct. I consulted my dad, who was a practical electrical engineer, and lived and breathed numbers and knew all this stuff in his sleep, being an advanced amateur photographer and all.
Dad had a rare voice condition that had started about the time I, the baby of the family, was born, and got gradually worse. It's all I knew, but he spoke in a gruff, raspy cross between a whisper and a cough. It usually terrified my friends when he answered the door or the phone. He was part American Indian and looked the part, except for the part that isn't very hairy. Dad developed a four O'clock shadow by about ten O'clock AM. On weekends he would usually not shave. He was stern looking to begin with. Handsome, but stern, or maybe even mean-looking.
Because it was difficult for him to speak, Dad didn't speak much. When he did, he was carefully listened to. It was also hard to know when you were being scolded and when you weren't. To be safe I generally assumed a guilty-though-penitent demeanor until I understood his intent. It was also advisable to not ask Dad any unnecessary questions for the risk involved in interpreting the good or bad humor of his replies. Dad seldom lifted a finger toward any of his kids. He never had to.
Things were not like they often are today. Kids were to be not seen, and not heard, as far as most adults especially dads were concerned. Dads worked their butts off and wanted their space and quiet when they were not working. If you were included in some activity that included dads it was because they had included you. Dad, as with other dads I knew about, ruled the roost. Not in a bad way but in the simply-the-way-it-was way. Those must have been good days for dads.
Sometimes I forgot myself and approached Dad as a human. This particular Saturday, I was struggling to make sense of the Deapth of Field table and f/stop combinations to be used with shutter speeds. I explained my rough findings to Dad--then asked him the central question.
"Which one is correct? . . .I mean. . .how do I know which one to set on the camera. They ALL look right to me [as technically they were]." He was expressionless. Speechless. His eyes were burning me though. "Uhh, which one is right?" I finally blurted in my own defense for I know what infraction I had commited. I hope none.
Dad had his own cryptic way of teaching. It was the Socratic Method--or something akin to it, although I didn't know that at the time. It worked alright--meaning that the lessons stayed with you, but it was not necessarily good PR with your kids. I didn't appreciate it even though to this day I have an image burned into my mind where my knowledge of depth-of-field is rooted. It's a clearly glaring page out of that stupid Yashica 44 operators manual.
"Right," he said, "They are all correct." No explanation followed as he turned away.
"But, Dad, which one do I use!" I was treading on ice, thin or otherwise, and it was a slippery slope.
Dad looked at me. He started to speak, but I guess decided it wasn't necessary.He walked on out of the room.
What have I been doing all this time? I thought to myself. I was getting a headache and was tired of the stupid book. Fifth graders are not intended to read this kind of stuff, I thought. I would have given up and gone outside, but it was winter in Fairbanks, Alaska. This was back when it got cold in Alaska--and it was sixty-something below zero and storming snow. I couldn't have found anyone to come out and play war with me. I really couldn't have found them. It was a white-out.
Back then, before the world shifted on its axis, or hydrocarbons punched holes in theionosphere, or we came a little farther out of the last ice-age, or the Japanese stream changed its ocean flow (take your pick)--in pre-nineteen-seventy-five Alaska, it got way cold. Fairbanks is way on up there. I've seen the thermeter outside our door, once we got the ice chipped off of it, rea 72 below zero. But that was usually on clear days. It was not as cold with cloud cover, but often snowing and windy. Not only was it cold in the winter, it was dark for long periods of time.
About the time my head-ache was going away and my eyes were glazed over in disbelief at how unfortunate I was, some hour and a half later, Dad came back. I had by then gained a hazy understanding of the implications of shutter speeds concerning motion blur, and an even more tentative understanding of the relationship between f/stops and focus. But I STILL had no idea of which combination was correct.
"Try 60 or higher to start with, and whatever f/stop goes with it. Or any combination higher than that." Dad said softly and scratched my head as he did, and walked away.
