SWAG nailing exposure without a meter

[John Kasaian]

Back, way back when that last Wooly Mammouth did a trunk dive into the LaBrea tar pits, light meters didn't exist. Today we have the "sunny 16" rule of Yore, but I'm wondering whom among us has honed the skill of nailing exposures (more often than not) without using a light meter in conditions less than sunny? This seems like a good thing to be able to do (I recall reading that Edward Weston was very good at it) but who has actually gone out of thier way to 'hone' that skill?I think even Ansel Adams shot one of His earliest successful photos "Golden Gate" without the benefit of a light meter. Is there any written information about the technique or is it pretty much a SWAG (Scientific Wild *ss Guess) guesstimate?

Cheers!

[David Karp]

When I was first learning to photograph, my Dad let me use his beloved Nikon S rangefinder. (what a brave and great Dad!) It did not have a meter, and I was not interested in using his incident meter, so he gave me the sheet that Kodak used to pack in its film boxes. The sheet had a few drawings of different situations: bright sun, open shade, etc. If I remember correctly, each drawing featured a suggested exposure. I used that sheet as my "light meter" and it worked pretty well. Of course, I was using black and white film with good exposure latitude and developing it in Diafine, so how could I go wrong? It worked fine until my Uncle bought me a Konica rangefinder with a light meter in it, and I have been reliant on those things ever since. That's the only written information on the subject that I remember.

[paulr]

when i spend a lot of time shooting, i often get to the point of not relying on the meter. i don't completely trust myself, so i usually meter afterwards, just to make sure.

it's not about developing some magical sensitivity ... it's just remembering similar exposures in similar light at around the same time of day. when i go around taking pictures, i'll do all the usual calculations but in the end most of my exposured over the course of the day are the same.

weston got so used to the light where he lived that he almost never used a meter. it got him into trouble when he went to mexico ... it's a lot brighter down there! he toasted his first few batches of film.

[Shen45]

Sunny 16 :) Wow -- here in Australia where I live in Summer [and today is sitting on 44c so it is warm] the summy rule is about f22 or more. Also we basically no longer have an ozone layer here so the unseen light needs to be accounted for in the skies.

Recenly I visited a friend for a month at Yosemite and was amazed how gentle the sun was, some days were close to 100f and yet at no time did I get burnt skin. I came home here and the temp was about 70 - 75f max and within 5 minutes my skin was showing signs of sunburn.

I would imagine similar conditions exist in the NM / Mexico areas.

[John Berry ( Roadkill )]

I use the ground glass as a meter.

[Walt Calahan]

Practice practice practice

I met a commercial shooter in London years ago who told me that when he and his mates were all photo assistants they use to bet on who knew the exposure without a meter.

With time, it is not a wild ass guess, it's an estimate based on your experience.

Quick, what's the exposure using 100 ISO film of Carnegie Hall on a clear winter day at high noon? Hint, Carnegie Hall faces north.

[Emrehan Zeybekoglu]

When I started taking photographs, it was with my father's old Zeiss Ikon, which in today's terms, is a bare bones camera (6x9). It doesn't have a rangefinder, and I didn't have a light meter either. When that's all you have, you just learn to use certain settings under certain conditions. I mostly used b&w and occasional color negative film, and most of the time the exposures were acceptable. Unless you are after fine art photography, where precision is of utmost importance, it doesn't really matter.

I used a lot of ORWO (read dirt cheap), Spanish made Negra and Forte most of the time.

Today I have all the modern gadgetry (well.. almost - haven't gone digital yet), but I don't use them mindlessly. One good thing about starting photography with just a simple camera and nothing else is that you learn to evaluate and measure light, even though you may be off the mark once in a while.

[Joseph O'Neil]

If you are out there shooting enought - in any format - you do get to the point where you can make a reasonable guess as to exposure. I've seen enough guys do it. Like the above postings say, it's not magic or anything like that, just experience, just how some people who are drasftmen or similar skill can draw a straight line on a sheet of paper without a ruler.

It's something in your head, similar in a way to watching a young child learn to play the piano. At first, they look where the keys are, then later, they just "know' where they are. Or typing without looking at the keyboard - something I am still not entirely skilled at. :)

I still refer to my spot meter as but I find my guess is pretty good, year round, and even in the darkroom under the enlarger, I have a pretty good guess at proper exposure for paper. About the only times I am lost and have to go back to square one is when I travelled to Colorado this past summer - the exposures up in the mountians is different there, the balance of the light is somehow different. or a few years back when i changed enlargers, I had to go back and relearn all my exposure times for prints.

so just keep at it, go out as much as you can. Even if you do not actually shoot that many sheets of film in a day, the experience you get from being out, metering different situtaitons, it will all sink in, and you'l be able to do it yourself soon or later, just like practice on the piano. :)

joe

[Joe Forks]

In the mid 80's when I bought my first Mamiya RZ67 I could not afford a light meter, and shot for about two years w/o one. Of course I would bracket religously, but I did pretty well.

Best
Joe

[Nick_3536]

John Sunny 16 goes all the way from F/5.6 to F/22. What Dave describes being on the film box is just Sunny 16. The full rule covers bit a bit more then just sunny.

http://www.davidrichert.com/sunny_16_rule.htm

That's not the full rule.

[BrianShaw]

As said much better by the some of the prior postings, determining exposure without a meter is mostly a matter of experience. I've also used the old Kodak PhotoGuide tables to estimate expsosure for a vaiety of situations.

I use a meter almost all of the time... but not for every exposure. I generally meter at the beginning of a photo session, again if I notice the lighting changing, and again at the end just to make me feel secure. In my neck of the woods, Sunny-16 works fairly well most of the time for outdoor shooting.

In general I tend to use film in the 200 ASA range. Using the same speed film helps with eyeballing exposure. I sometimes confuse myself if I shoot other speed films, even though the change to exposure is a rather simple transposition.

I view the meter as cheap insurance... well, not really *cheap* in some situations. Even the most inexpensive meter can provide an reasonable sense of assurance that the exposure will be okay. It's well worth developing an eye for exposure for those situations where a meter just isn't available but I'll never PLAN on shooting without the meter, nor would I advise anyone else to do so.

By the way... SWAG isn't **Scientific Wild *ss Guess** without data, it is often a *Silly Wild *ss Guess*.

[lee\c]

I can nail the exposure everytime with the Pentax Spotmeter. Why give up perfection?

leec

[Sal Santamaura]

"Recenly I visited a friend for a month at Yosemite and was amazed how gentle the sun was, some days were close to 100f and yet at no time did I get burnt skin. I came home here and the temp was about 70 - 75f max and within 5 minutes my skin was showing signs of sunburn."

You need more ground-level smog to filter the sunlight! Perhaps some from California's central valley can be exported to you so there's less for Yosemite.

[Craig Wactor]

I'm actually a little better without a meter than with one! That is, for working in sunlight, or overcast, and maybe in the shade. Also, when doing night shots I find experience better than a meter. Indoors or with studio lighting, I have to use a meter. I do carry a meter most of the time, and use it to double check, but relying on it exclusively seems to be a bad idea for me. Also, I have tested many meters and found some wild variations (especially in low light).


that old guide inside the kodak 35mm box is actually one of the best light meters around.

[Craig Wactor]

I wanted to add to my above post that I really only shoot around the central AZ area, where the light is pretty consistent. If I traveled the country/world photographing, I think I would rely on a light meter much more.

[QT Luong]

Three years ago, I found myself at the bottom of the Grand Canyon without a working meter for the last 48 hours of my trip. Separed from my car by 5000 feet of elevation, I photographed narrows in open shade, and scenics at various times of the day. Although I sometimes used bracketing for insurance, the main exposures were accurate to 1/2 of a stop. When equipment is not malfunctioning, I meter with a SLR in matrix mode.

[Paul Droluk]

I attended Brooks Institute for a couple of years (98-99), and for at least the first semester they stressed usage of BDE (Basic Daylight Exposure), an expanded version of the Sunny f16 rule. There was a printed table of exposures all based on + and - conditions... BDE for ISO 100 = 1/125 @ f11 2/3 and then +1.5 stops for X lighing condition, + 3 stops for Y lighting condition and so on. If I recall the example listing went to something like + 16 stops of adjustment factor... in 1/3 stop increments. I never embraced nor put in the effort to learn BDE, relying on metering instead. However I recall a couple students who did put in the effort. It was amazing to me, but by the second year they could nail exposures 95% of the time using the BDE system, even when shooting with transparency materials.

[Don Wallace]

I had a very enlightening ('scuse the pun) experience last year. I shot 35mm for years and relied heavily on TTL metering. I started in LF about 10 years ago and have always metered very carefully (for both b&w and colour). Last spring, I bought an RB67 because my wife won't let me bring the 4x5 on vacation and because I just can't get used to 35mm again (seems so fuzzy now). The RB is now my "tourist point and shoot." It has no TTL metering and I was forced to used my hand-held incident meter. On my first big vacation with the RB (to NYC), I discovered quite quickly that there were about 3 lighting scenarios: full sun, partial shade, full shade. After 2 days, I put the meter away (except for maybe the odd check). I shot lots of film, using the basic 3 exposure settings, guessing at minor adjustments. Almost all of my exposures were just fine. Mostly touristy shots, but they all look fine.

[Rick Koo]

I regularly set my exposure without a meter when shooting in smaller formats, but rely on the spot meter for lf and use my guesstimate as a reality check. I find that going without a meter keeps my mind more engaged and thinking about how the lighting changes. I don't always nail the exposure, but I'm usually within 1/2 stop - good enough for me when using C-41 or b&w.

Reading this thread, I realized that I use something like the Brooks method. I think in terms of how much less than 1/ISO @ f/16 the current lighting conditions are, or in particular the stuff for which I want to expose. Shade tends to be 4-6 stops under, indoors 8-9 stops during the day and 10-12 stops at night, bars are 13-15 (get out the Delta 3200), etc. Makes it really easy then to decide how much of the additional needed exposure I'm going to grab from aperture vs. shutter speed.

[paulr]

"I can nail the exposure everytime with the Pentax Spotmeter. Why give up perfection?"

sometimes it comes down to speed. once in a while i see something that depends on the light being the way it is right now, and i can look up and see clouds moving, getting ready to change everything.

the choice is between guesstimating the exposure, taking a small chance that neg will be way off, or spending an extra minute with the meter, and guaranteeing that everything will be off.

[Dominique Labrosse]

In the past I have used the sunny 16 rule (usually fumbling for an old Kodak box among the lint of my camera bag) with some success. However, when I was a darkroom rat I could usually nail my print exposures to within 90% of final values simply by looking at the projected image on the easel.

[Donald Qualls]

Most of my photography in the past few years has been "eyeball" exposure. Very rarely do I have a negative that's significantly underexposed, even more rarely are they significantly overexposed.

With large format and pinhole, I've regained the habit of metering -- in one case because of the expense of sheet film, compared to a frame on a roll, and in the other because reciprocity failure calculations need a better start than "Sunny 16" (in my experience).

[Graeme Hird]

I rarely (if ever) shoot during the hours of the day when "Sunny 16" is applicable. From 30 minutes prior to dusk until 30 minutes after dawn is when I shoot most often - the light is constantly variable and I shoot tranny film.

A meter is essential for me.

Cheers,
Graeme