Sunny-16 metering ---- best tips about judging light intensity?

[Heroique]

Yes, chances are high that you know the justly famous "Sunny-16" rule.

Now, let's say you lose your meter, and it's time to put your naked eyes to the challenge.

With 1/[film speed] for shutter snap, can you actually articulate what differentiates, say, f/16 light from f/8 light (two stops)? Or f/16 light from f/5.6 light (three stops)?

Better, can you describe the quality of light in 1-stop increments, from f/16 to f/4? Does the task get trickier as the light gets dimmer?

Please share your best tips so the rest of us can make ... an enlightened choice!

[ic-racer]

I have found nothing better than this. However, I use that scale for large format ISO 400 film exposures, not 200. With the price of 8x10 film I'll admit that I'd go back home to get the meter. For smaller formats I'll use this guide along with the meter. Though in the last 5 years I have shifted most of my smaller format work to cameras with matrix metering and 'Auto.'

[Heroique]

Nice, a picture is worth a thousand words.

However, it looks like the artist forgets or leaves out f/8 light – that is, he jumps directly from f/11 to f/5.6.

I'd like to see his missing description of f/8 light. I imagine it would be something between the "distinct shadows" of f/11, and the "no shadows" of f/5.6. What would he say? "Indistinct shadows"? "blurry shadows"? His omission might suggest that f/8 light is hard for the unaided eye to distinguish among these values, or maybe more difficult to describe.

It also makes me curious if people use something other than shadows for their "Sunny-16'" judgments about light values.

[ic-racer]

f8 is for when there are faint shadows.

[ic-racer]

Although those tables look childish, they are based on scientific data. In fact they are simplifications of a system requiring 4 tables of empiric data and a wheel calculator ( Sunlight and Skylight as Determinants of Photographic Exposure, 1948, Jones and Condit)

[Tin Can]

Yes and simple to learn. Shoot 35 mm, make careful estimates, record your condition.

Repeat as needed.

[mdarnton]

What Randy said, plus the way I learned was to guess first, then check my guess with a meter. When the two coincided, which in my case took about three years, if I remember correctly (that represents a lot of different lighting situations) I could stop pulling out the meter. Somewhere along in 1974 my meter was demolished in a car wreck, and I didn't buy another until I started using studio strobes a few years ago. After a couple of years with the strobes I stopped using that meter, too.

I still play the guessing game when I'm in places I think I might get confused or am bored, but I do it with a light meter app in my Android phone, Lightmeter, by David Quiles Amat. It tracks with my other meter quite well in reflected lighting use.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...otometro&hl=en
After using it for a while and determining that it worked for me on my phone, I got the pay version.

There was a Sunny 16 discussion on another board where people said you can't possibly do it by eye with any kind of consistent results. I did slide shows and film strips for four years and didn't use a meter all that time. It's like any other skill: if you don't develop it, it doesn't happen; if you don't use it, you lose it. Did they even have light meters for the first 80 years of photographic history???

[Heroique]

There was a Sunny 16 discussion on another board where people said you can't possibly do it by eye with any kind of consistent results.

I'm curious if there was a consensus about the cause.

For example, did they think the eye an inconsistent judge, even when conditions stay the same? Or are the variables affecting the intensity of light so tricky, numerous and inconspicuous, that making a judgment is difficult, no matter how good the eye?

BTW, I got a kick out of ic-racer's scientific article; namely, the "luminous density value" at the latitude for Washington D.C.!

[mdarnton]

No, you're attributing intelligence to people where there was none. It was more like "I can't do this, so no one can." They just refused to believe it was possible because they, themselves, never learned. One guy put up a bunch of perfectly-exposed contact sheets, and another moron asked "Yeah, but are they ALL like that?" implying he was cherry-picking. People don't know what they don't know, and the really dumb ones refuse to think that anyone can do something that they can't. That's a core value of being dumb: thinking you're the smartest person in the room. That particular forum has a lot of dumb. [/rant]

[John Kasaian]

"Sunny 16" works. I don't know what the folks on the other board are having an issue with.