Primarily a shooting class, basic color photography classes are excellent tools to illustrate film, lens and camera concepts. Also, this class is a good way to introduce the concepts of grain, saturation and color balance.

This is also the class to introduce color theory, too, like color complements and the mood of colors.

That is why slide film is nearly always used for this class. With a projector and slides, students can see, together, illustrations of your lectures. They can also present their work to the class efficiently.

A photograph projected in all its glory on the "silver screen" always looks more impressive. Colors look saturated and the subject matter looks dramatic. So it serves as encouragement to beginning photographers.

Film with good balance and high color saturation are best.

There are two schools of thought when assigning film to students. The first says to use the same film with the same speed throughout the semester. This way you minimize the variables and the student can more easily compare the various results they achieve.

The other school of thought says that you change the film according to the assignment. This allows you to show the various benefits of different films. I recommend a sort of blended method. Use the same film of the same film through most of the session. But give out a couple of "special assignments" this forces the students to use films like infrared, super-high speed.

Since this is a shooting class, you want to assign students an assignment weekly. Let students go to their local lab process their film. Most major cities have a lab that processes 35mm slide film in one day. Here is what they will need: