Someone hands me their camera almost every time I’m out shooting. It happens at a workshop, on the trail, standing next to a lighthouse at golden hour. They’ve just switched off Auto for the first time and aren’t sure what to do next. Underneath it all, it’s really one question. What are the manual camera settings for beginners standing in this exact spot, right now?
The answer is usually a quick back-and-forth. What’s the subject, is it moving, how much light is there, does the background need to be sharp or soft. Four or five questions, and there’s a clear answer. The reason behind it is really the part that sticks.
I can’t be standing next to everyone who asks that question, though. So for the last several months I’ve been building something that can be.
It’s called Field Companion. It’s a mobile app that walks through that same short string of questions, the ones I’d ask in person. It lands on the exact settings for the shot in front of the camera. Aperture, shutter speed, ISO, whether a tripod or remote is worth grabbing, where to focus. Every answer comes with a plain-English reason, because a number without the “why” doesn’t teach anything for next time.
A few things it’s built around on purpose:
Manual Camera Settings for Beginners, Without the Tutorial
There are already a thousand videos explaining the exposure triangle in the abstract, for anyone who wants that background first. Field Companion skips the theory lecture. It answers the question that’s actually in front of the lens, with the actual light available right now. The reasoning sinks in by doing it correctly, shot after shot, not by watching someone else explain it.
It works with no signal. Everything runs offline, with no account and no backend. That matters for anyone who regularly ends up shooting somewhere without cell service: trailheads, state forests, the bottom of a ravine.
It’s not another subscription. One purchase, done. Between the app fatigue and subscription fatigue out there, I built this the way I’d want to buy it.
It covers more than the obvious cases. The logic branches for architecture, landscapes, and people, plus dedicated paths for astrophotography and fireworks. Those two scenarios come up constantly and don’t play by the normal exposure rules.
It’s been through two full rounds of field testing with real people making real mistakes to catch, and it’s close. I’m working through developer account registration and store submission prep now, for App Store and Google Play.
More will land here as it gets closer, including a look at how the question logic actually works. It turned out to be a more interesting problem to solve than “if aperture then X.” Anyone with a setting scenario that always trips them up is welcome to drop it in the comments — there’s a decent chance it ends up as one of the branches.
More soon.
