 BetterPhoto Member |
how to take a picture without a light meter I have a medium format camera 6 by 4.5 which does not have an inbuilt light meter. I dont want to use a hand held light meter. I have heard you can take pictures sucessfully without a light meter by using the 16 method? does anyone know more about how to do this?
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
Bright sunlight, clear skies, at f/16 the shutter speed you should use is the closest to what the film speed is(film speed iso100-shutter speed 1/125 or 1/90 if you have it, film speed iso400-shutter speed 1/500, and so forth.) You base where you go from there on that if you have overcast sky, or later in the evening or early morning. Slight overcast, I think it's increase 1&1/2 stops. Heavier overcast, maybe 2 to 2&1/2. I thing Kodak still prints it on the inside of the box for a roll of film. I'm going by memory, so the compensations for overcast and late evening may be off.
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Alan N. Marcus |
Hi Jo, Gregory is right on the mark. Just a different way to state an answere. No light meter for you! It’s difficult to understand your passion. So many have labored so long to perfect the art of exposure. Once upon a time, BEM (before exposure meters) we used tables and formula. It’s sometimes hit and miss. The f.16 rule is the best approach. First ask yourself, what is the film’s ISO (film speed). Obtain the reciprocal of the ISO by writing it as a fraction, placing a 1 and a / before the number. Say the film is 200 ISO – write this value as 1/200. This value will be the shutter speed. Set you camera to this speed or the closest available value. f/16 @ 1/200 – No 200th second use closes value probably 1/25th. An expansion of this rule: Alan Marcus
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Alan N. Marcus |
Correction to one line: No 200th second use closes value probably 1/250th Alan Marcus
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Mark Feldstein |
If you don't want to use a separate hand held meter, like a Gossen Luna Pro or maybe a Sekonic, then get a prism meter finder for your MF camera. The sunny 16 rule is a ballpark calculation. It gets you into the cheap seats in the ballpark and won't buy you a program or hot dogs or for that matter even a beer. For accurate exposures, especially for transparency film which has little exposure latitude, you should be using a meter of some kind. If not, consider the cost of film you're going to be wasting over time by needlessly bracketing exposures to ensure your sunny sixteen calculations are somewhat accurate.
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Christopher A. Vedros |
I agree with Mark. Another option is to use another camera as your "meter". Practically any camera with a functioning meter will give you a more accurate starting point exposure than using a rule of thumb and waiting until the film is developed & printed to see how well you guessed. Chris A. Vedros
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