As I've pointed out in past posts, I'm relatively new to photography as a pursuit.  That's not to say I'd never picked up a camera until the past couple of years.  Truth is, I actually owned a digital camera back in 2004, and even took a few shots with it that turned out fairly decent for a guy who hadn't the foggiest notion of what he was doing.  It was an Olympus D-500L, given to me by a friend who helped me put together the graphics for a blog I was running at the time.  It was a fine camera in its day ... a better camera than I was capable of using at the time, in fact.  You really needed to have an interest in photography to use it properly.  I had a passive interest at best.  And, not long after I got it, it just seemed to stop working.  So, what interest was kindled at the time shortly burned out.

All these years later, things have changed considerably -- to say the least.  I've become nearly obsessive about it.  In fact, the better part of my daily routine is consumed by, if not actually taking pictures, then reading about taking pictures, or looking at pictures taken by others.  If photography were a religion (and some would argue that it is), I'd be a cloistered monk.

Being the devout, pious servant to the photographic gods that I am, it was inevitable that I would find myself yearning for a little of that old time religion -- which is what drove me to avail myself to the camera pictured above.  The camera you see is the Pentax K1000, known as the quintessential student camera.  It's the very polar opposite of pretty much any camera produced in the past quarter of a century.  It does absolutely nothing for the photographer, unless you install a battery.  In that case, it shows you a needle on the righthand side of the viewfinder that tells you whether you're about to under or over-expose the shot you're trying to take -- then leaves it up to you to figure out what to do about it.

And, if you want to do anything about it, you have to use the bottom wheel with the numbers on it in the picture above.  Those numbers tell you how long your shutter is going to be open.  If you have the number 4 situated next to the little red arrow, that means your shutter is going to be open for 1/4 of a second.  If you have the number 1000 there, that means it'll be open for 1/1000th of a second.  The little green "B" stands for "Bulb" -- which means that the shutter will stay open as long as you hold down the shutter button.

If you notice, right next to the "B" and just above the marking that says "ASA", there's a little silver box.  That's a window in the shutter speed wheel that you use to tell the camera's light meter what the speed of your film is.  The speed tells you essentially how light-sensitive your film is.  The higher the ASA, or speed, number is, the more sensitive the film is to light.  But, at the same time, the more sensitive the film is, the grainier the photos it produces will be.  So, in film sensitivity as in most things in life, there are trade-offs.

So, when you load the film into the camera, you set the film speed in the little ASA window to help make sure you get the right exposure level.  To help guide you, Pentax included a light meter, as I mentioned above, which indiscates whether or not your shot, as currently set up in the camera, will be properly exposed.  You use it by looking into the viewfinder as you compose the shot, paying attention to a little floating needle on the right-hand side, with a plus sign at the top, and a minus sign at the bottom.  If the needle is floating upward toward the plus sign, it means that your shot will be overexposed. 

An overexposed shot will come out too bright with no detail in the highlights, or in extreme cases, will look like a complete white-out.  Conversely, an underexposed shot will look dark, and have less detail in the shadows -- or be completely blacked out in extreme cases.  And, of course, a properly exposed photo will have a good balance of both highlights and shadows, with plenty of detail in both.

So, what do you do if you've got your film in the camera, and you've set the ASA number correctly, and you've got your shot picked out, but the light meter needle in the viewfinder is pointing up toward the plus sign, telling you that your shot is going to be overexposed.  Well, you have a couple of options: (1) You can adjust the shutter speed so that the shutter won't be open as long, thus cutting back on the amount of light you expose the film to, or (2) you can adjust the size of the aperture.  You know ... the aperture.  Oh, I didn't get to that yet, did I?

Well, the aperture amounts to the hole that your lens uses to allow light to pass through on its way to the film.  As you can imagine, a larger hole allows more light through than a small one.  So, if you want to use your aperture to correct for a potentially overexposed shot, you simply adjust it down to a smaller size.  On this particular camera and lens, in order to do that, you use what's called the "aperture ring" on the lens.  If you take a look at the image above, you'll see a series of numbers (known as f-stops) on the lens near the body of the camera -- that's the aperture ring, and you use it by turning it so that your desired number lines up with the red mark in the center of those multi-colored lines.

Now, here's the tricky part.  You see, the aperture setting is similar to the shutter speed number in that, the higher it is, the less light passes through.  In other words, the higher the shutter speed number, the less time it stays open allowing light to pass through to the film.  The same goes for the aperture: The higher the number, the smaller the size of the hole (or aperture), thus allowing less light to pass through to the film.

So, now you've got your film speed set, your shot picked out, and you look through the viewfinder and see that, as you have thigs set up, it's going to be overexposed.  In order to fix that, you can either adjust the aperture to a smaller size, or you can adjust the shutter speed to a higher, or faster, number.  Or, you can use a combination of both -- a slightly faster shutter speed, plus a slightly smaller aperture, to cut back on the amount of light passing through to the film.

There are people who swear by using one method or the other in their photography, though I think that's less and less the case nowadays, in the digital age.  There are "shutter priority" photographers, and there are "aperture priority" photographers, depending on which method they prefer to use in controlling the amount of light allowed to pass through to the film (or image sensor, in the case of digital cameras).  Modern digital cameras allow for a pretty easy transition between the two of them, as each has certain benefits that some photographers prefer to use in their images.

For instance, if you're photographing a scene that has a lot of action and movement, and you want to freeze that movement, a good way to do that is to use a higher (faster) shutter speed, and then adjust the aperture to meet that shutter speed for proper exposure.  Alternatively, you could also use a higher-speed film if the extra amount of grain isn't a problem for you.  This would allow you to use a smaller aperture while using a higher shutter speed to allow you to capture faster-moving action.

In the image above (taken with my Pentax K-x digital SLR), you can see how the action was captured and frozen in a way that the human eye wouldn't be able to perceive in person -- unless you happen to have the eyes of Ted Williams, perhaps.  The shutter speed in this shot was 1/1250th of a second.  Granted, the highest shutter speed available on my Pentax K1000 film SLR is 1/1000th of a second.  In all likelihood, that would be fast enough to capture an image of this sort.  But, if you tried to take this shot with a shutter speed of, say, 1/20th of a second, it would have turned out to look like little more than a blue blur running behind the mop handle in the foreground.

Now, it may have been possible to capture that same image by using a wide-open aperture, thereby forcing you to use a higher shutter speed to achieve a proper exposure.  But, if you know you're going to be photographing a fast-moving object, and you want to make sure you capture the action in high detail, it makes sense that you'd use your shutter speed to ensure that you're able to freeze it, and then adjust your aperture size in order to ensure a correct exposure.  But, just as using shutter speed is a good way of capturing and freezing action, using the size of the aperture has benefits of its own.

For example, say you're in a situation where there's not a great deal of available light, and you'd like to photograph a scene, but don't have a tripod handy, or any sort of flash, and the film you're using is only ASA 200, which is a fairly low-sensitivity film.  You could elect to try using a slower shutter speed to allow more light in, but since you don't have a tripod, there's a good chance that the image will turn out blurry since you don't have a stable surface or foundation to place the camera on to keep it still.  In that situation, you're left with little choice but to make the best use of what light you have available while keeping the shutter speed high enough to avoid blurring the image due to camera shake.

In this case, you might consider opening up the aperture to allow as much light through the lens as possible, while adjusting the shutter speed upward as high as you can without underexposing the shot.

In the picture above, you can see there was very little light available.  And, since I was using my K-x, I did have a built-in flash, but it would have ruined the effect I was trying to capture in this shot -- which was the smooth motion of the smoke exiting the stacks on top of the fireboxes outside a local BBQ restaurant.  Since I didn't have a tripod, or any kind of stable surface to rest the camera on, my best option was to open up the aperture as wide as it would go.  As it happens, the maximum aperture on the lens I was using at the time was f/3.5.

By opening up the aperture all the way, and using a reasonably high sensitivity (though low enough to avoid a great deal of grain in the image), I was able to keep the shutter speed high enough to avoid getting a lot of blur from the movement of the camera -- 1/8th of a second.  So, by using a wide aperture and allowing the camera to adjust the shutter speed accordingly, I was able to get a good, clean shot in low light and retain a respectable level of detail in the image.

The single best feature of digital photography is that it allowed me to learn these basic principles in a relatively inexpensive way.  Before, the process of learning this much would have forced me to learn these things at a much slower pace, and at far greater expense.  Fortunately, I was able to do a great deal of experimentation, and see the results of my decisions instantly, and make the necessary adjustments right there on the spot.  Had I taken up photography in the film era, there's a better than even chance I would have quickly grown disillusioned and discouraged, and likely would have given up before my third roll of film.

What I've written above should not be taken as anything approaching expert commentary.  I am a neophyte. There is a great deal -- multiple volumes, in fact -- more to taking good photos than I have yet to learn, much less written here.  There are undoubtedly details I've left out, and perhaps some things that I've gotten wrong.  (Please feel free to correct me in the comments if that's the case.)  I hope to add to this in the near future as I learn more about the craft myself -- for instance, the gritty details of  f-stops and exposure metering.  In the meantime, I just wanted to post this little contribution for those who might have an interest in photography, but feel a bit overwhelmed by it all.

In a sense, in buying my first 35mm film SLR, I'm sending myself to a photography school for autodidacts, so I might as well take someone along with me if they're interested.  I hope to be able to post scans of some good prints from this effort in the not-too-distant future.  In the meantime, if I feel I have something to share that might be of benefit to anyone considering taking up the craft, I'll post it here and hope I don't steer anyone wrong.