 Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 9:38 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
philslizzy wrote:
| Lloydy wrote: |
| philslizzy wrote: |
| Lloydy wrote: |
| ...and I struggle greatly with numbers ( I have dyscalculia ).. |
Me too but I never knew what it was called. You learn all sorts on this forum. Cheers LLoydy!! |
I only discovered I had it when I was about 45 years old, up until then I was just "thick" or "stupid"  A friend of my wifes is a specialist in learning difficulties and we were sat in a pub one night and I was telling her about my problems with numbers, and she asked if she could do some quick tests. She had her laptop in her car so I did the tests, and even allowing for being drunk I went to the extreme end of dyscalculia. What a revelation! I'd been beaten by maths teachers as a kid because they didn't understand. Now I had a name for it, and it suddenly became a whole lot easier to deal with.
Surprisingly I became an engineer, which involves a lot of number crunching etc, and I've always had photography as a hobby, but I do both without bothering with numbers. I've built a competition 4x4 from the ground up, the chassis, suspension etc is all home built and 'designed' - not one part has broken, nothing was designed on paper or using theory.
I take photographs the same way, I more or less ignore all the numbers. I learn which way the dial goes to get a higher shutter speed, ask me quickly wich is fasrt 1/30 or 1/125 and I couldn't tell you - numbers are that meaningless to me. I know which way the aperture goes to make it bigger or smaller. the important thing is that I know what I can achieve by altering each thing, I know that a large hole makes a smal DoF, and I know the downside of that. If I know the principles and theories, the numbers don't matter. After 40 or so years of using cameras I do recognize the numbers and associate them with what they actually mean to a degree, but throw 1/2 stops into the pot and I'm lost.
I just love live view!  |
Yours is quite an extreme condition, but you've worked round it and achieved a lot. Cogratulations. Seriously.
My prob is a little different I cant understand how numbers actually work past arithmetic. I can calculate exposures, d.o.f and other stuff, I can even understand the law of inverse squares (how much your flashes light falls off over a given distance and how much the light is lost using tubes or bellows with your lens) and in my past job as a dental materials specialist I was familiar with flexural strength, torque (we used nanoNewtons), and other stuff I cant remember now. But that's because i had to. I cant use formulae or long multiplication etc. but I am very good at guesstimating accurately.
My big problem is reading numbers, not using them. if I type a random string like this: 2926542654 it would take me ages to read it and if I copied it out I would have to uncover one number at a time. A pain in the ass at work where my job involves looking at ean or upc codes all day! Remembering or reading phone numbers is problematic.
Once again well done for working round it. |
Search
Memberlist
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
