How to play

Every level hands you a scene and an assignment — make the water silky, freeze the cyclist. You've got three dials and no automatic modes. Getting a bright enough picture is only half the job; the assignment decides the rest.

01 The three dials

All three change how much light reaches the sensor — that's the triangle. Each also does something else, and that something else is what every level is really about.

Aperturef/1.8 → f/22

How wide the iris opens. Watch it physically open and close in the middle of the dial. Low numbers are wide — confusingly, f/1.8 lets in far more light than f/22.

Also controls: how much is in focus. Wide open melts the background away; stopped down keeps everything sharp — until about f/16, where diffraction starts to soften the whole frame.

Shutter1/2000s → 2s

How long the sensor is exposed. Slower means more light — and more time for things to move while the picture is being taken.

Also controls: motion. Fast freezes a cyclist mid-pedal; slow turns a waterfall to silk. Handheld below about 1/30 and your own hands shake the whole frame — unless the level gives you a tripod.

ISO100 → 6400

How hard the sensor amplifies what it gets. The escape valve: when you've run out of aperture and shutter, ISO buys the light back.

Also controls: grain. Every step up is noisier. It's the cheapest fix and never quite free — but a sharp grainy shot beats a clean blurry one every time.

02 Taking a shot

Turn a dial by dragging it in a circle, scrolling on it, or clicking it and using the arrow keys.
Watch the scene — it updates live. Brightness, blur, grain and shake are all real, not previews.
Watch the meter in the readout under the photo. Needle on 0 means correctly exposed; left is too dark, right is blown out.
Press the orange release to take the shot and get scored.
Retry as often as you like. Nothing is lost, and your best score is kept.

03 How you're scored

Out of 100, split across the level's goals. Exposure is always one of them; the rest come from the assignment, and the level's actual lesson is always worth the most points. Each goal explains itself after the shot — read those, they're the teaching.

★★★90+Gallery wall material.

★★★75+Solid shot — one tweak from great.

★★★50+On the way. Read the tips and go again.

04 There's more than one right answer

This is the part most exposure tutorials get wrong. A level is a trade-off space, not a quiz — every one has several different settings that score three stars, and they produce genuinely different photographs. Trading a stop of aperture for a stop of shutter is the whole craft.

So each level tracks routes: every distinct way to three-star it. Find one and it unlocks with its settings; the rest stay locked until you shoot them. Stuck? Show me a better shot demonstrates one you haven't found — it turns the dials for you, but it doesn't tick the route off. Shown is not found.

Nothing is locked. Every level is open from the start and you can play them in any order. Stars are pride, not gates — the curriculum order is a recommendation, because each level builds on the one before it.

Pick a level →