Apologies

Some heartfelt apologies

If this seems to you another example of a website that is mostly made for English speaking white people — it is. But only because I am one of those people and couldn't create the site any other way. And you can be SURE that it bothers me that people of other colors, speaking other languages, will feel excluded. Who knows, if this thing succeeds, maybe it can be done in more languages with other flavors of people.

People Who Are Not White
To repeat, it rankles even me that the majority of the planet, people of various colors, are stuck with the image of a white American lady for almost every image in this site. But I figured if I am going to annoy much of the world whatever I do, I might as well choose a person that makes sense — to the average English speaker. See next item for apology about English only.

People Who Don't Read or Speak English
Most of the planet doesn't speak English, but I have neither skills nor budget to produce the site in even two languages, let alone 73. So once again, English is in the awkward position of being the language of choice — as it is for aviation. English is a really rich language, but really hard to learn, so I have enormous respect for people who learn it as a second language. I have tried and failed twice to learn a second language.

People Who Use the Metric System
Most of the world uses the much more sensible metric system, but America hangs on to inches, feet, miles, etc. Having grown up with inches and feet, I really can't think in any other way, so inches it is. Apologies to the rest of the planet. It is interesting to note that there are three countries on the planet not using metric: United States, Burma and Liberia. When I was in grade school in 1959, there was an assumption that America would eventually go metric, but not a word about it since then. Today it would be called un-American to go metric, which is odd since our military DOES use the metric system.

People Who Use Point and Shoots, Not SLR Style Cameras
Much of the content of this site is useful for anybody who takes pictures, but much is only meaningful for users of cameras where you can control f-stop. I will try to indicate which topics are meaningful for point and shoot cameras. If you are really annoyed, it might be time for a DSLR.

People Who Use Crop-Sensor Cameras
The problem is that a 24mm lens on a camera with a less-than-35mm size sensor does not give you a 24mm image — it crops out the sides and you end up with a 34mm to 38mm sort of image, depending on whether your crop factor is 1.4, 1.5 or 1.6.

So when I say 24mm, I am talking about 24mm as it works on a 35mm film camera or full-sized sensor DSLR. But every user of a crop-sensor camera has to multiply that 24 by that crop factor, which is really annoying.

Common question when I was teaching: Should I buy the larger, heavier, pricier standard lenses, or just buy the lenses made just for my crop-sensor camera. No easy answer. If you are pretty sure you will switch to a full-size sensor, buy the "real" lenses.

It bugs the heck out of me to carry a big, heavy lens knowing that 1/3 of the image is NOT hitting the sensor, and much of the weight and glass is wasted. So I went full-frame as soon as a full-frame sensor camera was available.

Octophobes and Squarophobes
To people who are really enraged that I used square images — and eight of them, I suggest you build your own photo education site and do it the right way, your way. Let me know when it launches.