That’s basically how I learned SLR photography. Either choose the depth of field (aperture) or the needed shutter speed for the subject. Then let the other settings be chosen, automatically.
Maybe that’s why I’m so stupid. 
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Well, in the most recent (4th) edition (2016), he already used a Nikon D800E with a 91k-pixel metering sensor. So I don’t think reliability was an issue. However, I feel what he did would have been easier achieved via either aperture or shutter priority mode and exposure compensation. Some excerpts:
When you look through your camera’s viewfinder while you are in manual exposure mode, you’ll see your light meter indicating whether there is an overexposure (the tracking dot is on the plus side) or an underexposure (the tracking dot is on the minus side). Your goal is to simply adjust your shutter speed (or, in some cases, your aperture) until the tracking dot is at 0.
I metered off of the wall and adjusted my aperture until f/10 indicated a correct exposure.
set the shutter speed to 1/30 sec. […] Then adjust the aperture until a
correct exposure is indicated by the camera’s meter.
set your shutter speed to 1/60 sec. and for sure use an ISO of 100 to 200. […]
Now you simply adjust your aperture until the light meter indicates a correct exposure.
readjusted the aperture until f/18 indicated a −2/3 underexposure
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Yes, that sounds like manually adjusting based on the camera’s metering, which the camera would indeed do automatically. Indeed it is puzzling why he recommends doing this.
Perhaps for the same reason programming courses force you to walk through an algorithm “by hand”, where the computer would do the same faster and probably better: increase understanding of what’s going on. That book sounds like course material…
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Yes, but that’s clearly not the point of the book. It’s about teaching manual mode in a way that the reader understands not just the how, but the why. Would using aperture priority have been more sensible? Of course. But that arguably doesn’t give the new photographer the understanding needed to make the best exposure decisions. With that understanding they can also more effectively use the priority modes, not to mention that if you want to use flash without TTL manual is mandatory.
Now, the book is not perfect. The section on flash, as I remember it, is pretty useless, and there’s certainly some questionable advice (such as ignoring diffraction). But the methodology employed is great for a beginner book, as it really hammers home the “practical” decisions behind an exposure.
Prompted by @bastibe I’m currently reading Within the Frame and it’s a great book, but it’s not for complete beginners. It’s about the “philosophy” behind the exposure and clearly expects the reader to already know how to use a camera. As such it’s an excellent second book after something like Understanding Exposure or this dSLR tutorial (which is really good), but can’t replace it.
That’s a good way to put it, actually.
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Excellent point. Exactly why I suggest that book too. A computer/cellphone can do math very easy, but kids still learn to do it by hand first.
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This implicitly assumes that the subject matter is comparable in complexity to a (university) course.
But it isn’t. The technical aspects of exposure (iso, aperture, shutter speed) are trivial, and can be understood in an afternoon at most by someone who completed primary school.
Yes, one can probably fill a short book by adding heuristics and examples and anecdotes and whatnot. But come on, the subject is not so deep.
Having been one class away from a technical degree in photography, I can tell you that you are completely wrong. We spent weeks going over these, and that included exercises to teach you to think about different scenairos where you’d want to emphasize a subject using aperature, shutter, or both, going out and make a bunch of photos, and then having them critiqued.
While a cursory understanding might take you an afternoon, actual exploration and understanding takes a while.
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I am not saying that utilizing the principles for artistic intent does not take practice. On the contrary, I think that it takes years.
Just that the principles per se are super simple.
And I still think that fiddling with dialing in exposure by the camera’s very own metering is just filler material. To be fair, a lot of textbooks have tons of that.
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I spent some time with the exposure situation, addressing the problem of HDR images which was critical. (the unexpected and difficult situation of the overexposed sky with underexposed ground) This is under control right now using various methods.
But the focus situation is not critical enough, I’ll just let this go simply.
I tried using F-16 aperture in daytime with the Av mode (+ exposure compensation option slider) and it’s improving my situation already, maybe more then enough. Along with other tricks like using a tripod, using the digital zoom in the LCD to verify my focus, turning off the stabilizer, using the focus points, using the Histogram.
But really thinking more about which specific thing I what to get in good focus. It’s easy to go out and to snap without thinking long enough about what I really want to achieve and how to do it, I noticed that.
All these things IMO should improve my situation without learning focus bracketing. Maybe another time.
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I follow the teachings of Harold Merklinger to an extent:
http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/DOFR.html
Instead of focusing on something, he recommends to set the lens at infinity and shoot.
“to an extent” means I sometimes shoot with the lens set at less than infinity - but I never shoot at the hyperfocal distance with the expectation of “infinite” DOF.
Per Merklinger, I base my expectation of detail on the aperture diameter, not the f-number.
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Sorry about this thread… I’m having a hard time at work and it’s shifting my energy elsewhere, I will come back and moving forward with this subject.
I’ll come back and read it entirely and hopefully some of the websites, when i am done snapping pictures 
(Your time was not wasted)
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Note that the “similar triangles” method is also in the Wikipedia article. Merklinger also has a detailed book on the subject, freely available for private use.
That said, I think that theory only gets you so far, because lenses are themselves imperfect (especially lower end zooms, which display a lot of field curvature).
The bottom line is: experiment, and know your lenses. Whenever I am learning about a lens, I find it useful to go to a football field and shoot at different focus lengths and apertures. Football fields have more or less lengths and markings so I can figure out approximate distances at home, and check sharpness from the grass (in Darktable: a mask emphasizing edges). Then I write down the results on my computer put it in the cloud so I can access it with my phone.
Also, accept that you will have to sacrifice sharpness somewhere, and that is an artistic choice. Some people prefer to blur the foreground (eg flowers hanging into the frame), while AFAIK Ansel Adams tried to preserve frontal sharpness. All are valid choices, depending on what you want to express.
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Maybe for the average photographer but not for anyone serious about it, and it includes “artists”. You mention posing but how can someone focus on poses without understanding shutter speed? If their model is moving, which some do, they’ll get a blurry (or static) picture when do not want it, since they didn’t understand shutter speed. A good artist has a solid understanding of their tools, and cameras are some of the simplest tools to learn (Like Tamas mentioned) (not to master (like Mica mentioned)).
This is the same argument of punk rockers and such who didn’t want to learn their instruments or music theory since it “limited” them or was not worth it.
EDIT: I would argue that not learning the 3 exposure parameters is even worse than punk rockers refusing to learn their instruments, since they could at least play some power chords and that takes longer to learn than the effects of 3 parameters 
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Scene luminance, shutter speed and f-number? 
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FWIW, I put notes like this in LibreOffice documents, and then save a copy as HTML. I send the HTML files to my phone, and they can be read even where there is no WiFi or cell service.
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I have set up a Nextcloud server at home, write the files in Markdown, and just tell the Nextcloud client to always keep a downloaded copy on the phone (I learned this the hard way — went hiking in a tricky terrain with unmarked paths, thinking I would have access to the GPX files on the server. It was a looooong hike).
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NOTE: I will learn the required things, it will just take some time. Even if my motivation don’t look very high about learning some new stuff. I like my pictures very much and roll them all day long on a laptop here close to me, this was my initial idea and probably my only goal. In fact all my expectations are surpassed, my initial goal was to beat the pictures from my Canon Powershot from the year ± 2002.
A picture can suck, but IMO most people don’t really care are about looking at the art of others in the first place. Most of the time they will look at a picture and this will bring back their own memories, the’ll want to talk about their own things, they will take out their cellphone to show me their own stuff.
But I try to demonstrate a genuine interest.
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I don’t think anyone has accused you of not learning?
It’s good to improve and ask questions, but enjoyment is what you should really aim for 
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I was compared to a real punk musician. not wanting to learn the laws of 3 and it’s true for the moment.
I asked about this depth of field situation here, made you write a lot and in the end, I am mildly interested and not the most grateful, I don’t want to read a book. I can understand why some of you can be upset a little.
@paperdigits My target of enjoying this is a total success, this is a fact. So it’S a success after all.
The good news is, I’LL DO IT! (Just don’t know when)
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