"Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China
As most of you know, 35mm film boxes used to have Sunny 16 instructions on the inside of the box
Nobody taught me a damn thing, I was sternly told read the BOX!
It worked!
Tin Can
John Cook was a gem. Miss him.
How about "Sunny" f32
(1/30 sec with ISO100 film speed at f32) ?
Bernice
It is widely known as Sunny 16, we adjust with a few factors
Film Speed
Latitude, time of year, hemisphere, weather...
Tin Can
I use both together to cross check each other... I have seen meter errors and also the scene can throw you curve balls...
I have read scene after scene that gave me the same reading time after time, but the reading just confirmed everything was ok... I even figured out how much to compensate from cloudy bright/cloudy/dark cloudy, early evening, typical night scenes etc by subtracting a stop for each condition... Usually works very well with experience...
But there are other factors I depend on my spotmeter for... For instance, was shooting in a forest fire burn area where the trees were all burned and very dark, so taking a contrast reading of the sky vs the dark shaded bark (that reflected a stop darker than normal shaded bark) so the reading saved me by giving me at least a hint of shadow detail there... And backlit etc scenes should be read as to see if scene will fit into film range...
So no doubt a scene should be read, esp for color...
Steve K
Many years ago in the late 1950's I heard about the sunny-16 rule and it's origin. Is this true? Years before Kodak had examined thousands of photographs (snapshots) taken be average people and had determined that the sunny-16 rule produced the best B/W images.
I used to walk around town with an odd assortment of bargain German or Japanese 35mm cameras from the 1930s-60s, most of them without a meter. Zone focus and estimate exposure based on experience, because when you see something in the street, you don't have time to pull out a spot meter and a notepad. I usually brought along a meter just to make myself feel better, and would occasionally pull it out and confirm that the sun was still in the sky. Mostly I needed the meter because I usually stayed out until it was too dark to shoot, so nearing dusk I had to drop the Sunny 16 thing.
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