nough light, and he gives the panorama too much. He is
willing to allow a professional finisher to do his developing and
printing. What the beginner wants to read is a chapter on exposure. As
an operator, he is seeking for a _rule of how_ and some examples of its
application.

If you lack a simple working theory, here is one now, in primer terms:

The closer the object which you wish to photograph is to your lens, the
_more_ light it requires; the farther away it is, the _less_ light it
requires.

This may sound somewhat unreasonable, but that is how a camera works. A
portrait head, or anything else that must be brought to within a few
feet of the lens, requires the greatest width of shutter aperture (or,
what comes to the same thing, the longest exposure); and a far-away
mountain peak or a cloud requires the smallest aperture (or the shortest
exposure).

To understand thoroughly what this means, take off the back of your
kodak and have a look at how the wheels go round. Set the pointer of the
time dial on the face of your camera at "T" (it means "time exposure")
and then press the bulb (or push the lever) which opens the shutter.
Looking through the back of your camera, make the light come through the
largest width of the lens. You can do this by pushing the other pointer
on the face of your kodak to the extreme left of its scale--the lowest
number indicated. On a kodak with a "U. S." scale this number is "4."

You will see now that the light is coming through a hole nearly an inch
in diameter. If it were a bright day you could take portrait heads
outdoors through this sized aperture with an exposure of one
twenty-fifth of a second.

Using this same amount of time, the size of the shutter aperture should
be reduced to a mere pin hole of light to make a proper exposure for
far-away mountain tops, clouds, or boats in the open sea.

Suppose we make our problem as simple as possible by leaving the timer
at one twenty-fifth of a second for all classes of subjects. We will
vary only the size of the hole through which the light is to enter.

For a close-up, a portrait head, we operate with the light coming
through the full width of the lens.

Now push to the right one notch the pointer which reduces the size of
the hole. This makes the light come through a smaller diameter, which on
a "U. S." scale will be marked "8." Only half as much light is coming
through now as before. This is the stop at which to take full len