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| What's inside a digital camera? This is a cutaway view of the Canon Digital Rebel 1000D. Here's a more instructive diagram, showing the main optical paths. We'll take apart a camera in class. | Most photography books talk about depth of field and depth of focus, but few of them give a formula for it. Here it is. N is the F-number, f is focal length, C is pixel size, and U is distance to the scene. We'll study this formula in class. | This is a tough shot, because the arcade ceiling is much darker than the courtyard beyond. I solved it by combining three exposures, an idea called "high dynamic range" imaging. You don't need a special camera for this; we'll try it in class. Here are more shots from India. | Dorothea Lange's iconic portrait of a migrant mother during the Great Depression. We'll survey the history of photography, and we'll spend a lot of time taking pictures. |
Due to high demand and limited resources, enrollment in this course was limited in 2009, and we expect to have to limit it again this coming year. If you plan to take the course in 2010, check http://cs178.stanford.edu on March 1, 2010 for the enrollment procedure. (A message to this effect accompanies the course description in the Stanford Bulletin. It will also pop up when you register for the course via Axess, once registration for Spring quarter opens.)
The procedure will probably involve signing up on Axess (there will be no enrollment cap in Axess), then filling out a brief online survey, with a deadline one week before class starts. Both tasks will be mandatory. If the number of people performing both tasks exceeds the number we can handle, then based on the results of the survey, an enrollment list will be published on cs178.stanford.edu soon after the deadline. We expect our sole selection to be class year, with preference given to upper-level undergraduates. In addition, we may need to select based on whether you have a suitable camera, i.e. one with manual control over shutter and aperture. Specifically, we have loaner cameras, including a number of Nikon D40 SLRs, which we will allocate on a first-come, first-served basis based on when you filled out the survey. Once we run out, we will deny enrollment to latecomers who do not have suitable cameras (and say in the survey that they cannot obtain one). We apologize in advance if we can't accommodate everyone who wants to take the course; we're frankly scrambling to meet the high demand.
