Sunny f/8?

Richard G said:
I've posted this before, but the Rolleiflex TLRs used to have a metal exposure table plate on the body, with winter and summer settings, Northern Europe. Northern USA might be similar.

I have never seen a thread on Sunny 16 that causes so much confusion. I won't add to that.
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I enjoy the confusion. :D
 
Full sunlight, distinct shadows ........ f16 at 1/film speed
Hazy sunlight, with shadows .......... f11 at 1/film speed
Cloudy with barely visible shadows ... f8 at 1/film speed
Overcast with no visible shadows ....... f5.6 1/film speed

... at least that's what it said on Agfa's slide packaging ... so as Roger says, one could probably shoot a stop or two slower in the shadows with negative film
 
I loved those old film box ends and have even kept one. I had a month without a light meter in the mid '80s and fortunately have never fully recovered. Stewart's is close to what I use and he's in the UK and I'm in Australia, latitude supplied.
 
"Does the sun just shine less brightly in Minnesota"?

This is a good question, and an often misunderstood one. Yes, where you live the sun is different than other places. We moved to Florida recently from New Mexico, and the sun is very different out here, something I expected since I've lived all over the country. There's sun, and there's sun. On a bright New Mexico day at noon, it was more like sunny f16 or even f22! Portland, Oregon was very different than NM. That's probably the most extreme difference I've seen, and as charjohncarter said, the sun is different from season the season, time of day, etc. Sunny 16, or 8 in your case, is a rough estimate that's "good enough" because print film has such a wonderful exposure latitude. Just take a camera w/ a spot meter out sometime and see how it meters all over the place in even slightly different street scenes.

I used to worry about this. When going out w/ my N90s and spot metering that meter readout was amazingly busy in the viewfinder, whereas my handheld meter held pretty steady. But when I went w/ one or the other, the shots were nearly always exposed just fine. Tri-X and good development seemed to make everything all right in the end.
 
I checked the light in northern England and southern Greece on consecutive days and if there was any difference I couldn't measure it.
 
Sparrow said:
I checked the light in northern England and southern Greece on consecutive days and if there was any difference I couldn't measure it.
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Dear Stewart,

With a spot meter, to measure the brightness range?

Japanese members of the IS0 standards committee wanted a lower standard gamma for B+W because northern light is, on average, less contrasty than southern.

Cheers,

R.
 
Also applies only between 10AM and 4PM (in summer; probably 2PM in winter) as when the sun is lower in the sky, the light is less intense.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Dear Stewart,

With a spot meter, to measure the brightness range?

Japanese members of the IS0 standards committee wanted a lower standard gamma for B+W because northern light is, on average, less contrasty than southern.

Cheers,

R.
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Dear Roger

I'm not that organised sadly, no it was just an incident reading taken with my old Seconic L28 pointing the dome at a clear-blue sky here in the Pennine hills ... I just happened to be going to Greece the following day and did it again out of interest.

In both cases the needle pointed at the little sticker I have on the meter to use as a datum, well more or less anyway
 
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Sunny f/8 on April 7th in Michigan – f/8, Fuji Acros 100, 1/125th on a Mamiya RZ67 w/ 180mm lens.
 
maddoc said:
It is actually the old German rule of thumb "Die Sonne lacht, nimm Blende 8" [Sun is smiling, use aperture 8] since "lacht" and "8=acht" are an easy to remember rhyme. Another one "Erscheinen Wolken Dir, nimm Blende 4" [If clouds appear, use aperture 4]

These rules were established when films with sensitivity similar to todays ISO125 were standard.
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Nice 'trivia' in this post. :)


Every next day I'll wake up with sun shining through the window, I'll sing: "Die Sonne lacht, nimm Blende acht!"

:angel::angel::angel:
 
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