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The Sunny 16 Rule - Get decent exposure easily



On my journey to learn more about how to take photos, I came across a technique called the Sunny 16 rule.

The rule is this:

If it's a nice sunny day outside, you set your aperture to f16.
Then, you set your shutter speed to whatever your ISO is. So if you have a film camera and use ISO 100 film, set your shutter speed to 1/100 (or 1/125 if that's what your camera has.) Or, if you have a digital camera, you can adjust both: ISO 200 + 1/200 shutter speed.

According to the experts, this will usually allow you to get a good exposure. You can adjust accordingly for different lighting conditions.

Try following these guidelines:
Bright sunlight : f16
Cloudy: f11
Overcast: f8
Heavily overcast/stormy sky: f5.6
Dusk: f4
At the beach or on snow: f22 (to compensate for reflected light)

I don't know how accurate this is, because I just learned about it myself. You can use a digital camera to practice with, and see how things turn out. This morning I took a picture of the morning sky, and set my aperture to f5.6, ISO 100 and speed 1/100.

ISO 100, 1/100sec, f5.6
The picture seemed to turn out fine. If I was shooting to capture the buildings, I think f4 would have been better, but I wanted the sky and f5.6 seemed to work well. I'll have to keep experimenting.

Here are some of photos I took using this rule. Do you think the settings I used got the right exposure?








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