(Please report any errors - and rest assured they were caused by internet gnomes, rather than our fine teaching staff!)
1) What are three common projection types used for the online display of VR photography?
a) Cubic, Polar and IMAX™
b) Mercator, Conic and Orthographic
c) Cylindrical, Cubic and Spherical
d) Small, Medium and Large
e) Rectilinear, Fisheye, and Polar
2) What is a tripod cap?
a) A metal or plastic cover that protects the head mounting threads on the tripod base when the pan head is removed.
b) A small graphic added to an assembled panorama that covers the view of the tripod legs or other camera support.
c) The maximum vertical height to which a tripod can support a camera, including legs, centerpost and pan head extensions.
d) A baseball-style hat featuring the Virtual Reality Photography or IVRPA tripod logo, worn by stylish VR photographers in the field.
e) A downward tilt limit, encoded into a VR movie, that prevents viewing of the nadir area, where the tripod or camera support is visible.
3) What is an entrance pupil?
a) The point in a scene from which a tripod is centered and a panoramic node is captured.
b) One of three optical centers for a lens (front, middle and rear)
c) The hardened point on the bottom of a tripod leg, used instead of a standard plastic or rubber foot, for stability on uneven surfaces.
d) The latitude and longitude coordinates (or waypoint position) about which the camera is positioned for a large object movie.
e) The no parallax point (NPP) for a lens, about which a camera is rotated for panoramic photography.
4) What formats are commonly used to deliver VR images on the web?
a) HTML5, Flash, QuickTime, Java.
b) Mpeg, wmv, Flash, SQL.
c) Psd, tiff, pict, jpg.
d) 35mm, 120, 70mm, 4x5.
e) EPS, PDF, QuickTime, HTML.
f) Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy.
Yes, there are others, too. These are just the most common. We just wanted to see how alert you were.
5) How do you determine your costs of being in business and your rates for VR photography?
a) Talk with other photographers about what they charge. Then set your rates 5-10 percent lower.
b) Join the International Photographers guild so you can charge specified union rates.
c) Add your estimated expenses, salary and profit for a year. Then divide the total by your expected billing days for a minimum daily rate.
d) A photographer's rates need to vary depending upon the exposure he or she gets, along with how much he or she needs the work.
e) Shooting rates should be based exclusively upon the assignment and what your competition may be charging.
f) A photographer's rates are determined by what his/her clients are willing to pay. Take whatever you can get if you want to stay in business.
This is a simple process, and it's amazing how few photographers take the time to do it. The process should be repeated at least once every year, so you can make any necessary adjustments to your pricing and rate structures that your business needs. For a free online tool that will help you do this, click here. Any of the other answers above will lead you down the many roads to failure. (Note that there is no International Photographers guild, and the unionization of independent photographers or independent photographers agreeing to common fees is prohibited by U.S. anti-trust law.)
6) What are the differences between licensing usage as opposed to selling photography?
a) Licensing means the author can earn a continuing stream of income from their work. Selling yields only a single fee.
b) Selling is for commodities. Licensing is for intellectual property.
c) The same image can be licensed for multiple uses to the same or different clients. If the image is sold outright, it belongs to the buyer.
d) Licensing unlimited rights offers most of the same value to a client as selling the image to them, but ownership is retained by licensing.
e) All of the above.
f) None of the above.
7) How do you position and mount your camera so it rotates about its entrance pupil?
a) Use a pan head that allows for leveling, fore/aft, and side-to-side alignment of the rear nodal point of the lens over the rotation axis.
b) Orient the camera vertically with an L-bracket, level the tripod and rotate the camera about its threaded tripod mount as you shoot.
c) Nodal point alignment is not important unless you're shooting moving subjects.
d) Be sure to have at least three overlapping match points per image pair for alignment in post production stitching software.
e) Both a and b.
8) Describe the inverse square ratio and what does it have to do with lighting?
a) It is the inverting of the image by the lens inside the camera. The scene and its lighting directions are inverted at the film plane.
b) To reduce light flares in a lens, invert the key light position and use a rectangular or square mask on it to limit the light scatter.
c) Illuminance = Intensity / distance2 (Double the distance of the light source, get 1/4 the amount of light on a subject.)
d) Illuminance = Intensity2 / distance (Halve the distance of the light source, get twice the amount of light on a subject.)
e) As the color temperature of a light source is doubled, the amount of light emitted increases by a factor of 1.4 (square root of two).
f) Both c and d.
9) What is the "Sunny 16" rule?
a) Exposure = 1 / ISO sec. @ f/16 in full sunlight.
b) Aperture = ISO / 16 @ 1/250 sec,. in full sunlight.
c) Shutter speed = ISO / aperture * 16 in full sunlight.
d) Applies to both film and digital media.
e) Both a and d.
f) Both b and d.
10) What does "magic hour" refer to?
a) The hour just after dawn, when shadows are long and light is most beautiful.
b) The last hour before closing time at the bar or cantina where photographers hang out, when all men are suave and all women are beautiful.
c) The hour before sunset, when the sun's light passes through more of the earth's atmosphere creating intense colors and dramatic contrast.
d) Both the the hour before sunrise and the hour after sunset, when winds are generally calm, allowing for longer, sharper exposures.
e) The hour required for film processing at your local lab, or post processing digital files, when you finally get to see your magical results.
f) Both a and c.
11) What is a key light?
a) A patterned light, such as that shining through a key hole, which provides a shaped illumination pattern.
b) The principal or primary light source illuminating a scene.
c) A color corrected, or color keyed light source, used to mainatin color balance under critical shooting situations.
d) Any high intensity or discharge lamp in a locked or keyed housing.
e) Any daylight balanced light (5,500°K) used to illuminate a scene (examples: sunlight, HMI, strobe, etc.)
12) What is a fill light?
a) An on-camera flash or strobe.
b) A color modified or gelled light source used to fill a portion of a scene with a particular color.
c) Any portable light source secured on a set with sandbags or other weights.
d) Any light source used to "fill" in shadow areas in a scene in order to reduce contrast.
e) Any focused or directional light source that produces specular highlights on a subject (hair lights, eye lights, etc.).
13) What is a back light?
a) A light illuminating the back of a subject.
b) A light illuminating the subject from the opposite side of the subject from the camera.
c) A light illuminating the subject from behind the back of the photographer / camera position.
d) A modern version of the ultraviolet or "black" light originally made popular in the1960s.
e) A second light added behind a diffusion screen to increase the overall intensity or brightness of the combined light source.
14) What is your best ratio between key and fill light?
a) 3:1
b) 4:1
c) Key light should generally be 1/2 to one stop less than fill light.
d) Fill light should generally be 1/2 to one stop warmer in color temperature than key light.
e) Will vary depending on photographer preference, but should remain the same for transparency film, negative film and digital capture.
f) None of the above.
Fill light should generally be 1/2 to one stop less than key light, although this can vary. Fill lighting is used to brighten shadow areas so that they fall more within the exposure latitude of the film or other media which the image is being captured on, and to more pleasingly balance the look of the object or scene being photographed. Note that if the fill lighting is set to be brighter than the key light, the scene becomes less natural looking and appears artificially lit. Technically speaking however, when a fill light becomes the dominant or brightest light source in a scene (measured at the subject), it becomes the key light, and the former key light, such as sunlight outdoors, can become the fill light.
15) How do you adjust the ratio between key light and fill light?
a) Open the lens aperture to a wider f/stop, to allow more light to reach the film plane.
b) Choose a slower film (ISO) speed or digital setting, to reduce the light sensitivity and narrow exposure latitude.
c) Move one of the light sources closer to or further from the subject.
d) Turn off the in-camera flash and any red-eye reduction program.
There are many other ways to do this, as well. Moving a fill light (or reflector, etc.) closer to or further away from the subject is generally the quickest and most effective means for changing the lighting ratio. The closer you move it to the subject, the more light it will cast - the further away it is, the less light it will cast on the subject. All this happens in an inverse square relationship (see above).
16) Which of the following factors affect both real and apparent sharpness in photography.
a) Circle of confusion, depth of field, focal length, subject distances and digital sharpening.
b) Optical quality, lens cleanliness, atmospheric conditions, lighting contrast and magnification.
c) Aperture, shutter speed, camera movement, focus and film/sensor resolution.
d) All of the above.
e) Both a and b.
f) Both a and c.
17) Which of the following can ensure elimination of lens flare in wide angle or panoramic photography?
a) Add a high quality flare filter to the front of your lens.
b) Use a lens shade or compendium.
c) Use only a single light source in front of your lens.
d) Use soft or diffuse lighting sources, rather than hard or pinpoint types of lighting.
e) All of the above.
f) None of the above.
Actually, b and d can help minimize lens flare, but none of the above can ensure its elimination in every shooting situation. Use of a lens shade or compendium, combined with careful and creative positioning of lighting, are the best means to minimize lens flare. Choosing high quality optics with good optical coatings also helps, as does keeping your lenses clean and well maintained. Removing filters from the front of your lens will also generally help, as the additional optical surfaces added by a filter create more possibilities for reflections and resulting flare. As far as we know, there is no such thing as a filter that eliminates lens flare, although it's nice to dream.
18) Under what circumstances is film capture a better choice for VR photography? When is digital capture better?
a) Film is better for panoramas. Digital is better for objects.
b) Digital is better for panoramas. Film is better for objects.
c) Digital is better for broad exposure latitudes of outdoor shooting. Film is better for controlled light shooting in the studio.
d) Both a and c.
e) Both b and c.
f) Choose based on your post production work flow. Neither has a quality advantage over the other any more.
g) This is far too complicated to summarize in a multiple choice question.
For a case study that considers the pros and cons of both for panoramic photography, click here.
19) What are the differences between fisheye and rectilinear lenses?
a) Fisheyes are supplemental optical elements added to other lenses, while rectilinears are the prime lenses which fisheyes are added to.
b) Rectilinear lenses maintain straight horizontal & vertical lines in a scene throughout the image frame, while fisheyes do so only in the center.
c) Fisheyes are designed primarily for underwater use, while rectilinear lenses are mostly used topside.
d) Rectilinear lenses usually offer a wider field of view than fisheyes of similar focal lengths.
e) Fisheyes provide greater image detail per degree of view than rectilinear lenses of similar focal lengths.
f) None of the above.
20) What's the difference between a full frame fisheye and a true fisheye?
a) A full frame fisheye projects an image circle larger than the film frame/image sensor. A true fisheye's image circle fits fully inside the frame.
b) Full frame fisheyes are supplementary lenses, while true fisheyes are prime lenses.
c) True fisheyes are always prime (single focal length) lenses, while full frame fisheyes are generally zooms.
d) A true fisheye produces a circular image, while a full frame fisheye projects a rectilinear image.
