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#51
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Rule of f16
Nick Zentena wrote:
Sunny 16 start with you guessing (!!!) what the actual light level is. Sure, it helps to get near when your meter dies. But i can't think of any reason to fall back on that "rule" at any other time. To safe time? C'mon! Not guessing. Thinking. If somebody shows you a pot of distilled water boiling at sea level and tells you " I think that's 100C" do you need lab grade testing gear with six digits of accuracy to tell you it's pretty damn close to 100C? I'm never off by more then 1/2 a stop with sunny/16 when compared to my incident meter. That's alot better then some in camera reflective meters. If I was off by more then that I'd wonder what was wrong with the meter. Yes, guessing. While the boiling point of water (even the distilled variety) is not a fixed entity, the weather is even less "thinkable". Remember the terms used to describe the possible variations which would necessitate bending the rule a bit? Welldefined terms like "hazy", "darker" etc.? Unless you're using a meter, you're guessing. No more. You say you're guessing (!!!) is never more than 1/2 stop off. Good. I believe you. Like i also believe people when they say they can handhold at 1/15 and get good results... |
#52
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Rule of f16
Lassi Hippeläinen wrote:
A rule that complex is harder to use than a spot meter. But unlike the spot meter, the rule can be carried in the head. You're sure? Anyway, unlike the rule, the spot meter is actually accurate. |
#53
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Rule of f16
"Bob Monaghan" wrote in message ... wait, you are saying sunny-16 rules of thumb are "hard" and "complex" versus learning the zone system and a spotmeter? ;-) How many amateur photogs do you know who use the zone system and spot meters for color slide work anyway? ;-) Zone exposure with slide or digital is very easy: there are only 5 zones, and you use only 3 of those (IV, V, and VI) for metering most of the time. sorry you-all seem to have problems with these difficult terms like "beach" and "snow" or "dark" versus light shadows ;-) Millions of clueless amateur photographers (besides me ;-) have gotten billions of good shots using just the little "paper" light meter film guides Kodak and others provided with their boxes, again with such descriptions - basically the sunny f/16 rules. Only with negative film, and only if the lab can rescue incorrectly exposed negatives. Besides costing more than most amateur 35mm and many MF cameras, both my analog and digital spot-meters have manuals that are much more complex than sunny-16 rules, and not just in the densitometric applications section either ;-) That's a pointg. When I bought my spotmeter, it was the only one on the shelf I could get a reading from without reading the manual. But pretty much every consumer digital camera has a spot meter in it. (Except for the Canon 300D, sigh.) The sunny-16 rule is free, often included as part of the instructions printed inside many film boxes, and pretty useful for many situations. Similarly, the night exposure guides and other rules of thumb are my starting points for tricky exposures, and a lot less weight to carry around too ;-) If you don't care about being off a stop or so, rules of thumb are fine. But that's not acceptable for slide film. David J. Littleboy Tokyo, Japan |
#54
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metering a best "guess"? ;-) Rule of f16
you mean "guessing", as in guessing whether or not the reflective meter is reacting to a black cat in a coal bin style situation, or where the tiny critical subject is somebody's face when highlighted by a spotlight on a black stage, or that kind of metering challenge "guessing" situation? ;-) and "guessing" whether that peeling paint is really zone V, or maybe it should be VI? ;-) Or the computerized meters that let you average ten or twenty spot readings so your "guess" of what an average for zone IV is rather better than just your one spot meter reading "guess"? ;-) and my favorite is those handheld meters where you have to guess when you are metering too much of the sky and not enough of the ground because you are holding it not quite at the right angle. Got one or more of those meters, do you? Don't you think you are "guessing" when you guess where to point it for a reading? Or how about those meters in the camera or prism? Do you really know its response pattern? Lots of variations here too. Again, you have to guess where the meter is really reading and responding to in a complex pattern, as many actual meter test patterns will show ;-) Incident light metering is generally better, IMHO, but there are lots of situations where my cityscape and landscape subjects are in different lighting than I am, esp. after storms or in fading lighting etc. Here again, I have to "guess" whether the lighting I am in is close enough, or is it a stop more or less than what is going on over there on that hill? ;p) there are lots of slop factors in photography, which fortunately mostly average out, from true light transmission (t-value) vs. f/stops to actual film speed to processing variations (a biggie) to problematic high shutter speed actual values to light meter accuracy. I will also vouch for finding problems with meter settings or bad batteries or spoiled wet selenium cells by using the sunny-16 rule for a check. This has happened a lot more lately since some local camera discount stores have taken to labeling cheapy Chinese made alkaline batteries as MS-76a silver oxide cells "replacements" for my nikons etc. Those dang batteries die in days or even hours of use instead of months ;-( So I would advise others to use sunny-16 to check up on your meters as well, because in the end, it is all a "best guess" situation ;-) grins bobm -- ************************************************** ********************* * Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 * ********************Standard Disclaimers Apply************************* |
#55
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Rule of f16
Bob Monaghan wrote:
wait, you are saying sunny-16 rules of thumb are "hard" and "complex" versus learning the zone system and a spotmeter? ;-) Nope. What is easily as complex as learning to use the zone system (well...) and a spotmeter is knowing when the sunny-16 rule applies. Not the rule itself. |
#56
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paper film guides vs. metering ;-) Rule of f16
ah, this is news to me, as I have shot hundreds of rolls of slide film with sunny-16 style rules. Seriously. Why not? I get rather good results, and a lot of my walk-about photos are in stable daylight lighting. I am rarely even half a stop off. I may mess up now and again, but I manage to do that with a meter too ;-) moreover, I tend to set hyperfocal settings and typical sunny-16 lighting settings on my manual cameras. Then if I see a bird or other fast shot, I just pull up the camera and shoot. Usually the lighting is close enough that I get a good shot. finally, when I really could use guidance, as in many night shots, the meter is more problematic than not. Again, I have found the Kodak nighttime shot starting points to be surprisingly good starting points (though I admit I bracket for critical shots, but I would anyway). In any case, issues like reciprocity and meter sensitivity (mercury lighting etc) make nighttime metering as much of a guess as the paper film guides ;-) my $.02 ;-) bobm -- ************************************************** ********************* * Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 * ********************Standard Disclaimers Apply************************* |
#57
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metering a best "guess"? ;-) Rule of f16
"Bob Monaghan" wrote in message ... you mean "guessing", as in guessing whether or not the reflective meter is reacting to a black cat in a coal bin style situation, or where the tiny critical subject is somebody's face when highlighted by a spotlight on a black stage, or that kind of metering challenge "guessing" situation? ;-) But those are exaclty the cases where spot metering is by far the best. For the stage situation, set the camera to +1 EV compensation (caucasion performer), focus/lock exposure with the meter/AF spot on performers face, recompose, and shoot (before the lighting changesg). Works every time. For the cat, decide what zone holds the amount of detail you want to show, spot meter, shoot. You can't do that with an incident meter without knowing whether that was a gray or black cat. and "guessing" whether that peeling paint is really zone V, or maybe it should be VI? ;-) No, that's not guessing, that's looking. You do have eyes, don't you? You do care what your slides/prints will look like and you think about that when you compose? If so, you've already decided what zones you want to place things in. Silly rant by someone who can't use his equipment and is too cheap to buy decent batteries snipped. David J. Littleboy Tokyo, Japan |
#58
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metering a best "guess"? ;-) Rule of f16
Bob Monaghan wrote:
you mean "guessing", as in guessing whether or not the reflective meter is reacting to a black cat in a coal bin style situation, or where the tiny critical subject is somebody's face when highlighted by a spotlight on a black stage, or that kind of metering challenge "guessing" situation? ;-) [...] No. I can see if the thing i'm pointing a meter at is a black cat in a coalbin or a white swan in the snow. Easy enough, isn't it? Better still, i can point a meter at any and all points in the scene. You can still only guess how much light loss that slight haze up there will cause. Not to mention the many variations of cloud cover. True, you need to know a fair deal to be able to interpret correctly what a lightmeter is telling you. But that does make sunny-16 rule guessing more precise because...? By the way: your not so good meter point is hard to oppose, save by saying that it is not about the merits of metering vs syunny 16 rule, but all about using meters that are not so good. Same, of course, goes for the "bad battery" line of argumentation, etc. When something's bad, it is bad. No contest. But that proofs what about another thing??? And of course: incident metering has its limitations. But that doesn't mean that it is bad. Not at all. And even less that not metering at all (sunny 16) is better. Or even as good. It simply isn't. Arguments like that are pretty pointless. I can name many things that could be better. But how would that make one thing that is not good a better thing? And so we come to your "lots of slop factors" argument... Yes, there are many of those. The sunny-16 rule is one of them. Now if it were no worse than any other thing, if it were no worse than metering... But it is. It even loses on relative merit. And again, yes, there are many slop factors. That does not make it good to add another one, does it? |
#59
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metering a best "guess"? ;-) Rule of f16
yes, I agree. You understood my major point, which is that there is a lot of interpretation and experience which has to go into using various spot meters, reflective and incident light meters in general, and aspects of their use (such as situations like black cats in a coal bin for reflective meters (even spot meters)) require experience to adjust readings in light (pun intended) of these meter limitations. This is as much a "best guesstimate" as my interpreting dark well defined shadows vs. light shadows for the rule of sunny-16. The nice thing about the rule of sunny-16 is that it costs us nothing, is distributed free printed inside many film boxes, and serves as a useful check on proper settings and function of our main metering device. As for David's faith in spotmeters, having both an older analog and a newer digital spotmeter, I am like the joke - a man with one watch always knows the correct time, while a man with two watches is never really sure. [i.e., he gets different answers from each watch]. It isn't unusual to have multiple meters esp. of different types (selenium backup, SBC luna pro, CdS etc.) give readings which don't precisely agree, right? ;-) In such cases, I do best by going with whichever meter is closest to my sunny-16 guesstimate ;-) grins bobm -- ************************************************** ********************* * Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 * ********************Standard Disclaimers Apply************************* |
#60
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Rule of f16
Q.G. de Bakker wrote:
Bob Monaghan wrote: yes, viz.: Aperture stops conditions f/22 -1 stop snow or beach f/16 sunny-16 bright daylight dark shadows f/11 +1 stop weak or hazy sun sun low in sky f/8 +2 stops cloudy bright f/5.6 +3 stops darker clouds subject in shadow f/4 +4 stops sunset I can't help but love the precision in the "rule" expressed using the words "beach", "dark", "shadow", "hazy", "cloudy", "darker", "bright"... ;-) But remarkably, even for slide film, these rules are quite effective. I personally use my in-camera spot or incident meter 98% of the time; but I can usually look at a daylight scene and guess the setting pretty closely from EV 16 (f/22) down to EV 12 (f/5.6) (for speed +/- 1/3 stops from film EI). From there reciprocity gets the rest. Below EV 0 or -1, the Fred Parker chart is all I need. "Precision"? With so much variance in meters, meter geometry and film sensitivities, meter precision is not as important as knowing your meter and your film well. As another poster mentioned, the Fred Parker 'meter' works quite well. http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.ht...ensity%20Chart http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.ht...%20CHA RT%20B I keep a printed copy in my office and on some excursions bring it along. Cheers, Alan -- --e-meil: there's no such thing as a FreeLunch.-- |
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