The Sunny 16 and Me - Not the best marriage.

[ruben]

Hi Will,

Thanks you for your lenghty explanation. I do love these kind of.

You may be quite right, from my viewpoint. I have been thinking that by using a fixed ISO film and incident readings only, or MOSTLY, I may be learning the same, and not increasing my dependability on the meter.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[ChadHahn]

Sunny 16 also is rather useless for indoors.

What do you mean? Light is light.

A candle lit close up with 400 speed film is 1/4 f4
A school auditorium is 1/30 f2
a well lit nighttime street or stage show is 1/30 f4
Neon lights 160 f4

Chad

 

[Keith]

When familiarising myself with the sunny sixteen method ... I practised with my digital camera set on full manual which is so obvious I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it. Especially useful for learning in tricky shadow areas where the LCD screen is a bit easier to see clearly after each shot. LCD's are a pain in bright sun ... but bright sun is easy.

 

[Sparrow]

What do you mean? Light is light.

A candle lit close up with 400 speed film is 1/4 f4
A school auditorium is 1/30 f2
a well lit nighttime street or stage show is 1/30 f4
Neon lights 160 f4

Chad

A ten watt fluorescent at 3 metres is?

 

[ruben]

Using 400 speed film the following always work. If you don't believe me try them.

1/500 f5.6 shady side of the street.
1/60 f2 illuminated store window
1/60 f4 brightly lit store interior
1/30 f2 home interior under incandescent bulbs
1/500 f11 overcast day.

I don't need the chart I made most of the time. I keep it in my wallet in case. I memorized the few situations that I normally use and automatically set the exposure.

Chad

Hi Chad,

In a somewhat funny situation, while shadowfox (Will) brings me closer to the sunny16, you bring me back to my doubts about it again.

What I was trying to say several times, is that the different lighting situations you find during several hours are far beyond the diet list you propose here.

Let me go wild and unkind or brutal and uncivilized for a moment:
What the hell "1/60 f4 brightly lit store interior" are you talking about, as if we all were having a happy shopping morning at the 5th Avenue ?

Kindly do not take offense, as I do respect you and you are trying to help, and expressing your viewpoint with all your rights attached. It is just that I couldn't resist expressing mine in better terms. Again it was just a tone for exception only and hopefully with your permission, borrowed in advance.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[ChadHahn]

Hi Chad,

In a somewhat funny situation, while shadowfox (Will) brings me closer to the sunny16, you bring me back to my doubts about it again.

Let me go wild and unkind or brutal and uncivilized for a moment:
What the hell "1/60 f4 brightly lit store interior" are you talking about, as if we all were having a happy shopping morning at the 5th Avenue ?

Go into any department or grocery or book store and take a light reading. I'm talking about a big chain not a little mom and pop place with no light but a Safeway or what ever the equivalent is. I've taken pictures in Barnes and Nobles, Safeways and other big stores across the United States and the reading is always the same.

It doesn't even have to be a store. Any place with lots of fluorescent panels in the ceiling will have the same reading. An office or confrence room.

Chad

 

[wolves3012]

What do you mean? Light is light.

A candle lit close up with 400 speed film is 1/4 f4
A school auditorium is 1/30 f2
a well lit nighttime street or stage show is 1/30 f4
Neon lights 160 f4

Chad

All school auditoriums are lit equally then? And how well lit is a well-lit night-time street? My whole point was that sunny f/16 does NOT apply in anything other than a close approximation to noonday sunlight. You may have a set of rules that work well for your shooting but I defy you to go shoot a roll of transparency film, in varying circumstances, without a meter and return with all frames correctly exposed. The eye is just not up to that job, a meter and very little experience is.

Like ruben, I'm not out to suggest that meterless estimations cannot be made, good luck to those who are able to do it. For myself, I know it does not work. I've tried many times to estimate an exposure before metering, only to discover just how far out I would have been!

 

[ChadHahn]

I'm tired of arguing about it got to http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm if you want to learn more.

Chad

 

[julio1fer]

Sunny 16 is really guided judgement. It may be achieved, with a 1 stop error, by experience. I have used it for more than 40 years.

I do not recommend Sunny 16 if you have less that 1 stop latitude in your film. If you have to use it, then bracket.

In a recent trip I used a small digicam in manual mode as a lightmeter. It is the ultimate lightmeter. Size is the same as a good Gossen or Sekonic, and you get a preview of the image. Digicams are also good for tricky flash exposures.

 

[40oz]

I think a mistake a lot of people make when attempting to use the Sunny 16 "rule," is the assumption that your eyes are somehow "metering" the light. They're not - your brain is analyzing the image in front of it. For instance, if you can easily see the light source is a naked sun, it's pretty obvious what the exposure should be. If it's obvious the subject is in shade, the exposure is perhaps 3 stops down.

Obviously this depends on the amount of light from the sun in your locale. This is where a bit of experience comes in. In general, you won't be more than a stop off on a clear day just shooting at 1/film speed and F16 or some equivalent. After processing the roll, you will know if you are giving too much exposure. The more you use it, the more accurate you will be. The use of a meter need not be an either-or condition. Merely use the meter for an initial reading, a sanity check if you will, and commence shooting a number of frames. Check the meter occasionally just to see what it says. My experience tells me that I tend towards under-exposure indoors and at night. So I now consciously open up/slow down for indoor/night shots, and have had much success.

There's not one rule for "Sunny 16," rather it's a collection of data points. I learned best not using a cardboard exposure guide, but by remembering "1/film speed; sunny - f/16, shade - f/5.6," and practice, using a meter only occasionally. Plenty of failure, but hey, they weren't composed properly either

When I worked at a lumber mill, I could tell you how long a board was within 6", how thick within an 1/8", and how wide within a 1/2". Working the greens at a golf course, I could tell you the height of your lawn within a 1/4 inch at a glance. Working as a pizza cook, I could weigh ingredients in my hand to the ounce. Certainly not on the first day, but after only a few months, such "feats" were second nature.

I've certainly enough proof I'm no superman. It's simply a matter of learning how to use your God-given powers to observe the world around you and glean the useful facts. Sunny 16 isn't really a ruleset for perfect exposures, it's a method for learning to read light and translate into exposure settings, much as the Zone system is a method for learning how exposure and development affects tones on a negative rather than a guide to taking perfect pictures.

 

[shadowfox]

I practised with my digital camera set on full manual which is so obvious I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it.

Maybe because if I'm lugging around my digital camera, I don't have to use the S16 rule, therefore I'm not compelled to practice, but I'm sure that's just me, I'm laaaazy!

Back to the discussion, here's a simple, far from perfect example, this is shot using an MF folder, in a gallery with mixed light sources, I set it to 1/50 (IIRC) and f3.5, half estimation, half intuition. The film is expired Kodak Portra 160VC.

No postprocessing other than USM to restore the sharpness from that awful flatbed scanner that I used. Sorry for the dust, it's scanned from a print full of static. If someone is getting rid of their Epson 4990 cheaply, I'm all ears

 

[Roger Vadim]

hmh... seems like we still have 1932, nobody's got a lightmeter... i love my lunasix!!
(and crave for a small and handsome meter... any coments on the digisix?)
no ofense to the old-schollers. just being lazy. (and bored of wrongly exposed pics)
regards, Michael

 

[ruben]

hmh... ... any coments on the digisix?)............regards, Michael

Yes, a digisix is a kind of meter i will never buy. First and foremost because although being a digital meter, after pressing the button you get an Exposure Value (!), that then you have to translate by moving an analogue dial.

Classic example of Gossen style of making things as cumbersome as possible.

True, there is not competing digital incident meter for the shoe mount cathegory. But the digisix is not a real digital meter, it is more of an old like cds with a temperature meter.

Sorry the being negative. From Gossen meters I own the old Sixon, the Sixtar, and the Pilot. Gossen problem is not with accuracy but with unfriendly design.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[matt fury]

I shoot basically only at night, and it's like damn impossible for me to shoot without a meter. Makes my M4 sad indeed

 

[ruben]

I shoot basically only at night, and it's like damn impossible for me to shoot without a meter. Makes my M4 sad indeed

Two fixed lens rf cameras may be specially suitable for you. The Yashica Electros with semi AE only, very contrasty yellow patch, automatica parallax correction and AE up to 30 seconds. Or the Yashica lynx 14 e with 1.4 lens, fully manual and within viewfinder metering lights (plus parallax auto compensation) The tax is its size and weight. If you can live with it, you will feel like with your first love. If.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[John Robertson]

New rule for UK to replace Sunny f16.
Wet and cold f4

 

[matt fury]

Two fixed lens rf cameras may be specially suitable for you. The Yashica Electros with semi AE only, very contrasty yellow patch, automatica parallax correction and AE up to 30 seconds. Or the Yashica lynx 14 e with 1.4 lens, fully manual and within viewfinder metering lights (plus parallax auto compensation) The tax is its size and weight. If you can live with it, you will feel like with your first love. If.

Cheers,
Ruben

My problem with fixed-lens AE cameras thus far has been that they usually can only be set to 800 or 1600 ISO at the highest. That's one of the reasons I gave away my QL17.

But I have been lusting after a Lynx 14 for some while now. Size & weight be damned, I'm just waiting until I stumble across the right one.

 

[40oz]

I shoot basically only at night, and it's like damn impossible for me to shoot without a meter. Makes my M4 sad indeed

trial, error, guess, and experience worked for me. f/1.5 @ 1/30 works in a lot of places I frequent, 1/15 in a few. I develop at 1600 if I feel confident, 3200 if not

 

[tyrone.s]

Now, my question to you, after all these stated is what else the Sunny rule has for us. Now I am not in the mood of "the best for me" or the best for you. The issue is what is there for everyone beyond that famous sunlit situation.

I think that the sunny 16 rule gives us a certain sort of freedom and independence from having to think 'what does the lightmeter say'. None of my attached shots are anything spectacular but they are based on my reading of the subject. As it happens I could just have easily have used a light meter and gone from there, which I do all the time. But in these cases I was using my FED1 and I didn't want to be double handling a light meter so I had a go. Plus 2 of them were grab shots and it was a case of take or miss the moment. I think that sunny 16 / readling light LV's and thinking EV's are powerful tools to let us commit to taking photos rather than commit to exposing photos according to a meter. Of course I don't get it all the time. But often enough.

I've picked these 3 shots because I think that they illustrate that sunny 16 can be used in a wide variety of non-sunny / more difficult situations (such as high contrast between forground / background. I work out in the desert so normally sunny 16 is pretty safe for me anyway! But what if I'm in full shadow under a shelter or inside a poorly lit hall? What if it's sunset?

So I guess I'm saying that I think that the sunny 16 ruke can help photographers be more decisive photographers and certainly less worried about taking a photo and thinking 'Oh gee, the light meter was indicating under ...' Just my 2 cents.

 

[ruben]

Well after all it is not too bad that with iso 100 under the sun the incident reading must be f11 at 1/250. In fact I have a small story about it.

Some couple of months ago I bought a pricy Pilot meter, for its small size, that of course couldn't match the sunny rule under the sun. But since at less demmanding situations the meter was quite good, and because the meter is so cutely small and always in my pocket, and I paid quite a lot - one day I found myself looking at the sky asking if the warming of Earth may be changing the Sunny Rule.

No chance. A few days ago I went out with the small digital Sekonic, took an incident reading and bang ! The Sunny Rule re-appeared again.

Now for something more controversial. Several folks have said that using the Sunny Rule for shadows is not that difficult, implying in my opinion that it is not so important to estimate it right. Others said it openly. I strongly disagree.

Why ? Because it is true that under shadow conditions you always will get away with an acceptable image, even if your estimation was mistaken by two stops. But what happens when you want to compensate that estimation to give an evening the look of an evening ? Shadows are extremely tricky, and among other factors because our eyes are used to adapt to them.

So the lonely RFF member leaving out there on the hills, will do better when descending to the city. by always taking a small digi with him.

Perhaps the big deal is not how to do without hand meters, but how to use them dexterously, quickly, and creatively.

Finito.

Cheers,
Ruben