ray*j*gun
Veteran
Its all degrees.......get as accurate as your circumstances allow but....be prepared to improvise.
My MOS in the Marine Corps was Combat Photographer and the conditions in Viet Nam were so horrible that we had a saying.....(using Tri-X and a Nikon).... F11 and be there! Oddly most of the time I came out with decent images.
My MOS in the Marine Corps was Combat Photographer and the conditions in Viet Nam were so horrible that we had a saying.....(using Tri-X and a Nikon).... F11 and be there! Oddly most of the time I came out with decent images.
sirius
Well-known
Ah, bmattock, we meet again on this topic.
I like what Keith said. It's a Zen thing. Let go and learn to trust yourself. The pictures will come out well, most of the time.
There is a good Flickr group on the topic. Have a look at this thread. There is a completely wonderful story from Tom Abramson here. It's very memorable.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sunny16/discuss/72157603697812726/
Cheers and happy shooting.
I like what Keith said. It's a Zen thing. Let go and learn to trust yourself. The pictures will come out well, most of the time.
There is a good Flickr group on the topic. Have a look at this thread. There is a completely wonderful story from Tom Abramson here. It's very memorable.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sunny16/discuss/72157603697812726/
Cheers and happy shooting.
xxloverxx
Shoot.
Bit of a late reply this, but to learn to guess exposure:
I got an incident meter and carried it everywhere with me for a month or so, taking readings everytime the light changed.
After a while the common scenes got committed to memory (e.g typical, bright but cloudy day in HK should be around f/4 at 1/125, ISO 400; inside the MTR (train) it's about 1.4/1.8 at 1/125, ISO 400)
Now, I shoot almost anywhere confident that I'm not over 1 stop off. I recently checked a guess against my meter and I was off by a few footcandles…
I got an incident meter and carried it everywhere with me for a month or so, taking readings everytime the light changed.
After a while the common scenes got committed to memory (e.g typical, bright but cloudy day in HK should be around f/4 at 1/125, ISO 400; inside the MTR (train) it's about 1.4/1.8 at 1/125, ISO 400)
Now, I shoot almost anywhere confident that I'm not over 1 stop off. I recently checked a guess against my meter and I was off by a few footcandles…
bmattock
Veteran
"...most of the time...decent images...".
If you are under combat conditions, I have no doubt that stopping to meter can be dangerous to your health.
When one is not in such dire circumstances, and one wants more than 'most of the time' results, I posit that metering is a Good Thing.
bmattock
Veteran
Bit of a late reply this, but to learn to guess exposure:
I got an incident meter and carried it everywhere with me for a month or so, taking readings everytime the light changed.
After a while the common scenes got committed to memory (e.g typical, bright but cloudy day in HK should be around f/4 at 1/125, ISO 400; inside the MTR (train) it's about 1.4/1.8 at 1/125, ISO 400)
Now, I shoot almost anywhere confident that I'm not over 1 stop off. I recently checked a guess against my meter and I was off by a few footcandles…
I guarantee that your eyes are not calibrated light sensors. What you are 'committing to memory' is not light levels, but as you said 'typical conditions'.
This works as long as conditions are typical.
Many of us live in climates that vary considerably from day to day, from hour to hour even. Some of us shoot in cities, where buildings block the sun and etc from block to block. Clouds often don't just appear in the blink of an eye, they more in more-or-less slowly and the scene darkens bit by bit, unnoticed by the human eye, until one suddenly notices "Hey, it got dark!"
As I have also stated - precise metering is for when you want to take creative control over your exposure. If you do not, and 'good enough' is literally good enough - then it seems you have a system which works for you.
I do not obsessively meter every scene I shoot. I have cameras which possess no means to set shutter speed or aperture, so metering would be moot in any case. And yes, they generally produce a usable photograph. But with such photography, exposure is not one of the aspects of the photograph which I can place under my control. If you can't or don't want to do so, no problem - don't meter. If you can and do want to, then metering is really required, because your eyes cannot.
shadowfox
Darkroom printing lives
Bill, I agree that our eyes and brains are not the same as a calibrated meter.
But I don't agree that you *have* to use a meter otherwise photography doesn't really matter or you're just being a dolt.
One of the most important aspect of creativity is unpredictability. Without which, we won't learn or adapt to anything different.
Now, please don't turn around and thinking that I said "no creativity if you're using a meter."
And sometimes I just like to pull out a negative from the tank and see crisp images despite me having not used a meter. Yeah, I'm shallow that way.
shadowfox
Darkroom printing lives
I forgot to respond to the OP's question:
I understand and use Sunny-16 as an offset system. That is, it can be used under most lighting condition as long as you remember the basic rules.
Yes, some of the usage depends on your past memory for certain light situations, it is not unlike those fancy meters on Nikon or Minolta that records a bunch of "samples" of light situations.
Yes, it is all but an approximation, but if you're using B&W film or C-41 (or even slides) and the light situations doesn't change much, you're going to be surprised how well the images came out.
And most importantly, and probably why some of us like it, it's fun to do. Not for Bill, I gather
but it is for me.
bmattock
Veteran
Excellent.
Oh, I don't think I've ever said that. My 'dolt' remarks are intended for people who think they *can* meter with their eyeballs, if they really think that.
What matters in photography is the result - to the viewer. What matters in photography is intent - to the photographer.
I am glad when a person likes my photograph, and whether I metered or did not meter is hardly important to them. However, if I am intending to expose a scene in a particular way, then metering matters to me, because like focusing, it is a matter of intent. If I intend to expose it thusly, then I need to make use of the tools that permit that. Guessing might work, but it might not. To me, that is not productive.
One often gets results based on unpredictability which one likes. Supposing that it is an effect of random (or guessed) exposure, how does one reproduce that effect if one does not know how it was achieved?
I won't. Please don't infer that I said anyone who doesn't use a meter is a dolt, when I did not.
I think a lot of the misunderstanding between people like us with regard to metering has to do with our individual understanding of exposure. I have no argument with people who claim they can get 'good' exposures from guessing. Sure, no problem.
But is that exposure under your control? Not if you're guessing. If you guess, you get what you get. If it is within acceptable parameters for you, then that obviously works for you.
But would you do the same with, say, shallow DoF and focusing? Would you accept a lens that backfocused, for example? You intend to place the focus at the eyes of some portrait subject, and instead it is his ears that are in focus and the eyes blurry. Would that be OK? I would argue it would not be OK, because it is not what you intended. Now, you could stop down and let DoF cover any focusing error, but that is a compromise, isn't it? Fine if you're OK with compromise, but not if you want total control.
With regard to exposure, I posit that it is a creative tool like any other. You can accept 'good enough' exposures that are the result of memories and guestimates and if it works for you, it's no different from stopping down to cover the errors of a mis-calibrated lens. If, however, you intended to precisely place black at X and white at Y, then guessing just isn't going to cut it.
So for me, it is down to intent. Yes, I fully understand that one can get acceptable exposures by guessing. I do it myself all the time, or use cameras which can't be set anyway. I like the results. But I do not expect precise exposure control from those methods or cameras. And I do think that precise exposure is a creative tool that can be exploited if one wants to use it, and takes the time and effort to master that particular control.
You don't have to manually focus - AF works just fine most of the time, right? DoF will cover a multitude of focusing errors. But some of like to manually focus, for the control it gives us. Metering is the same.
johnny9fingers
Well-known
I miss the days when exposure info was printed in the boxes. Now I go to the web site for whatever film I'm using and print out the spec sheet. I use that info as a base whether I have a meter with me or not.
shadowfox
Darkroom printing lives
Got ya! my bad for misunderstanding your post above.
By memory. For me, reproducing the result that I like is the intention, not necessarily having the exact reproduction of what I got before, I may actually like the results that are completely different the next time around.
I suspect that you and I represent the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to figuring something out.
I go from the most abstract idea, to the general idea, and down to some level of detail that satisfies me, but not more. (This drives my wife absolutely crazy, btw).
Some people go the other way, the details must already be covered as the ground base before moving up to the more general and abstract ideas.
I submit that for the detail-oriented folks, the idea of not knowing what causes things to happen is quite unsettling. While the abstract/general-idea-oriented people are easily overwhelmed with the mental effort necessary to keep all the parameters in check to ensure reproducibility.
I agree about the intent being the determinant factor.
My mindset of recognizing unpredictability as a creative tool to "predict" the outcome that I like (as I said above, not necessary the same outcome as before) probably comes from dabbling with printing, at least, printing the way I learn in by myself, not having anyone (other than books) who can show me the "proper" way.
It certainly is made worse by alt. processes where the outcome is almost guaranteed to not be the same as the previous try. But that's exactly what attracted me to photography.
That's probably why I feel at home with Sunny-16 and manual focus.
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Harold Gough
Established
You might say that, wherever you are, the 16 rule applies, under sunny skies with a few fluffy clouds. However, should you travel 1,000 miles or so closer to the equator, perhaps on a holiday trip, you could easily find that the rule would give about a stop too much exposure. Rules only work in the circumstances for which they were intended.
Richard G
Veteran
In Florence in 1986, aged 26, with experience of a Gossen Sixtar for nearly 10 years, with a new M4-2 but no meter on that trip, I shot Ilford FP4 and Kodachrome 25 for a month with 95% satisfactory, and with those that weren't I knew it ahead of time because the light was low. I used the instructions on the box. I now have a Gossen incident meter and love it, but I will resort to Sunny 16 often and it is a good thing to know as a reference for mad meter readings in difficult circumstances - a pink rose in a sea of dark green fooled my M6's meter but I knew to ignore it. I am going to print out the abridged Fred Parker table kindly provided above. I love meter threads.
Carlsen Highway
Well-known
Hmm.
All that really matters is that it can be done perfectly successfully, and the trick is to find a set of exposures for generic lighting situations - carry them in your head - and then make variations off them for the specific situations that you find.
One way of teaching yourself is to make up your set of generic exposures and memorise them. Theres not many that would get you by. Five only.
Then meter the light the day has given you at home, before you go out, with your automatic camaera or light meter, and then go forth with that as a baseline and and judge everything from that.
Shoot a roll of film through the day and when you get home before you go inside, estimate the exposure off your letterbox (or something) and then check it on the meter and see how far off you are. Develope the roll of film and see if you were out through the day. This will refine and inform your variations.
If you do that you will learn fairly quickly. Do it five days in a row and youll be alright after that.
(Its basically how I taught myself to get by with a non metered Leica. I didnt have a light meter and I refused to take my automatic SLR with me to act as a light meter.)
I am now a perfectly successful guesser of exposures, and it didnt take years to do at all. I have since bought a Weston MAster light meter but sometimes on casual days I will still just meter the outside light and then leave it at home.
All that really matters is that it can be done perfectly successfully, and the trick is to find a set of exposures for generic lighting situations - carry them in your head - and then make variations off them for the specific situations that you find.
One way of teaching yourself is to make up your set of generic exposures and memorise them. Theres not many that would get you by. Five only.
Then meter the light the day has given you at home, before you go out, with your automatic camaera or light meter, and then go forth with that as a baseline and and judge everything from that.
Shoot a roll of film through the day and when you get home before you go inside, estimate the exposure off your letterbox (or something) and then check it on the meter and see how far off you are. Develope the roll of film and see if you were out through the day. This will refine and inform your variations.
If you do that you will learn fairly quickly. Do it five days in a row and youll be alright after that.
(Its basically how I taught myself to get by with a non metered Leica. I didnt have a light meter and I refused to take my automatic SLR with me to act as a light meter.)
I am now a perfectly successful guesser of exposures, and it didnt take years to do at all. I have since bought a Weston MAster light meter but sometimes on casual days I will still just meter the outside light and then leave it at home.
Harold Gough
Established
It was in Morroco in about 1970 that , using K25, I found that the cloudless sun was about 1 stop brighter.
chris00nj
Young Luddite
Besides sunny 16, my other frame of reference is:
Normal indoor light (EV 5) = 400 ISO, 1/60, f/1.4. I can count stops from there.
Normal indoor light (EV 5) = 400 ISO, 1/60, f/1.4. I can count stops from there.
Harold Gough
Established
Although you define it, in doing so I think you have a contradiction in terms. I don't do indoor photography (except via natural light through a window) other than with flash. Even so, everyday experience of life tells me that indoor light levels are very variable. Where do you find this "normal" light?
robklurfield
eclipse
The Black Cat Exposure Guide is handy and more or less pocketable. You can use it to educate your eye and brain to do the guesstimating with a higher level of repeatability. I carry it around as a backup or to force myself to see how well I can think my way through exposure decisions without a meter. Bmattacok is right, however, that your eyes and brain are not able to be calibrated like a meter and are, at best, only capable of gross estimates. Nevertheless, I think you can learn your way to good results by practice.
www.[B]blackcat[/B]photoproducts.com/guide.html
Some other posters in this thread and elsewhere have recommended some similar tools that are free and equally good.
I have found that I can meter a scene quickly and then estimate adjustments from there quite well if I have established kind of base ready of the light from which to start. For many situatons, anything other than a narrow spot meter is still giving you only an estimate of the light, unless you're very precise in reading zones with a reflected or incident meter. In other words, even a good meter used insufficiently can cause you to take terrible exposures.
www.[B]blackcat[/B]photoproducts.com/guide.html
Some other posters in this thread and elsewhere have recommended some similar tools that are free and equally good.
I have found that I can meter a scene quickly and then estimate adjustments from there quite well if I have established kind of base ready of the light from which to start. For many situatons, anything other than a narrow spot meter is still giving you only an estimate of the light, unless you're very precise in reading zones with a reflected or incident meter. In other words, even a good meter used insufficiently can cause you to take terrible exposures.
Harold Gough
Established
So why not just use a meter carefully? What is the point of substituting some other system for accurate metering?
baachitraka
Established
Keith
The best camera is one that still works!
I suggest pactising with a digital camera ... they are not really all that forgiving with exposure errors and your mistake is instantly obvious to you via the review. When I get my X100 I intend using it to give myself a refresher course in meterless shooting ... the camera is ideal for this because of it's manual controls instead of the command dials that DSLR's seem to have mostly gone to these days.