Sunny 16.

I'm afraid, Stephan that the issue is you don't understand the sunny sixteen rule...
perhaps this will help you see it for what it really is:


sunny sixteen rule DOES in fact account for variables....
heck even for photographing the full moon you need to start with the assumption that the moon is lit with direct sunlight from behind you and start with the sunny sixteen rule to get a proper exposure...
back in the day every roll of film came with a chart like that, even after cameras came with meters...

My first ever book(let) on photography (circa early 1970s), used exactly that calculation, in a similar tabbed format too.

Very useful, along with the other rules of thumb like for eg that the minimum shutter speed for hand-held shots should be the reciprocal of the focal length used.

Yes but do you really need to learn those starting points, it all comes down to judgement no matter how you look at it because the sunny 16 is only an approximation.

Don, it doesn't change the thing that I find it too much to remember and I just don't want to calculate something as variable as exposure, just don't see the use for it.
The full moon with the sunny 16?

Having read this thread I have to say I am on the side of Anvh here.

I could do with a sunny 69, but that's not necessarily photography

Having lived in Texas and England, the idea that a "sunny" day is anything like the same light level is laughable I'm afraid (let alone colo(u)r temperature...)

And, F16 ?! who shoots at that on anything other than a tripod at static scenes - at which point you might as well get a lightmeter and a chart out!

I've worked with a lot of DoP's as well (at a very high level with very experienced guys, and I really respect their talents!) - and whilst at first you get the impression they really know their stuff and have absolute confidence in their ability to light and film a scene, after a while you start to spot that they are pulling the light-meter out of their sleeve and having a very discrete quick shufty all the time. However, the opposite behaviour - waving a meter in front of actor's faces at the last minute - is also done from time to time, but is just deliberate theatrics.


Then again, what you can do with film stocks - and what you can pull-out in Post, is incredible nowadays! results in most stuff being film incredibly flatly with "we'll sort it in post" - even most flares and burnouts are done in Post now.

The "sunny 16" rule is an emergency assistance for calculating exposure from a known value.

The full rule covers when and where we expect a 100 ISO film to be correctly exposed at 1/100 sec and f16. This specifies the UK and similar latitudes in Europe, summer, mid-day, bright unfettered sunshine. This is remarkably accurate and has been since it was twigged since the ASA scale was taken on board almost universally. (100 ISO = 100 ASA)

There's no intention that f16 be used for all exposures, everything else can be deduced from that figure by exploring the rest of the table, making adjustments for time, location, time of year, lighting conditions.

A similarly accurate table of suggested exposures could be found inside every box of film ever sold, either in the leafloet provided or printed on the inside of the box.

Actually I think a full moon can only be shot using Sunny 16 - it's too small in the sky to get an accurate reading through conventional methods but we know the light is the same as a sunny cloudless day here on Earth. When I've taken pictures of the moon I've always found f/16 and 1/ISO (more like f/5.6 and 1/4xISO on digital) gives me perfectly exposed results.

How old are you?
I'm not that old, but have been taking pro grade photos for at least 25 years.
I learned on a camera (k1000) that had a button cell powering the meter and everything else mechanical.
I used that camera long after they discontinued the batteries for the meter.....

you develope your eye and your judgement and the meter becomes your "verify my judgement" tool, not your "what the h-e-double hockeysticks do I do now? My meter is out, I can't take a picture, might as well put the camera down" crutch.

now I realize in this day and age, if your meter is broken, probably means your digital camera won't fire anyways,but there are times when that meter gets fooled, but your eye and your brain, trained to see it, is still a more reliable meter.

no matter what the marketing dept says, you can have all your 265 segmented honeycomb patterned 3-d with cappuchino fancy pants metering, but at the end of the day, it is just a tool to measure the light and reigister an 18% grey average of the light it sees. Your eye is better, and your brian more sophisticated, but it has to be trained to do the job.

Guess the exposure first, then double check with your meter....
your meter was designed to follow the sunny sixteen rule and produce 18% grey.

your in camera meter was designed to help people who know nothing about photography, get the kinds of results pros were getting BEFORE your meter was ever invented.

Guys that used the sunny sixteen rule were first, handheld meters second.... in camera meters third.
all metering based on the same rules.
When I shoot a wedding, I do 90% on manual, and I'm faster and make fewer errors than machine gunning it on auto......
if it weren't for flash, I wouldn't need a meter...
and even with flash....
I could always use distance and yet another "Rule" to calculate exposure.....

"fix it in post" is code talk and has two meanings:

1)" I f'd up and don't know how to fix it", or "I don't know how to make the shot/missed the shot", in camera and hope to save it it the computer
or
2) the client wants something that is too expensive to shoot in camera and we'll need to FINISH this in the computer.

You ever hear someone say "Fix it in post" on a pro shoot, you should immediately suspect it means example number one.

Don I agree with you on almost everything.
Precisely. I only find it too difficult/much to work with the sunny 16 system.
You just get a feel what values should be right to certain situation and well if you want you can see it as the sunny 16 rule. The thing is with rules it sound like you should precisely follow them and that they are always true but that's not the case.

That's not true the ANSI standard is 12% grey for light-meters.
18% comes from the printing world, since that's 50% black and 50% white so neutral grey.

But you still need to know that though. And what if you found those values by experimenting, then it's from your own experience you learned and not the sunny 16.
Then in my part I would say that with experimenting you probably learned more then from the sunny 16 rule.

I'm just pushing to go out and see what work instead of following all kinds off rules, it only gets more confusing.

Unfortunately, meters can be calibrated both for 18% or 10% grey, which is one reason why there are discepancies between makes. We need to learn how to use our equipment and then stick with it.

Digital cameras are different than light meters and have their own specifications. There's no such thing as 100ISO and 6400ISO sensitivity on a digital camera. The higher ISO's are obtained purely by amplification.

Unless the spec. has changed it used not apply to Jpegs or RAW only Tiffs which is rarely seen nowdays and makes proper user calibration of the camera impossible. The ISO spec. for digital cameras did use a base of 18% grey and sRGB.

Could the 18% grey have been a mistake? What is 18% grey as an RGB value?
Is it 119R 119G 119B? I seem to remember reading that somewhere. It's not as you would think 127R 127G 127B

Camera's are indeed different but you would expect the build in light meter also follows the standard.
Some one showed us this site once link
Edit: One that also talks about bits (still need to read it) link

ps funny but we are still on topic I believe ^^

That seems correct for film Stefan and isn't much different from this site which refers to digital. Sounds like they did use 18% initially for digital but only had a headroom of 2.47 stops before they hit 100% white. So they reduced it by 0.5 stop to give almost 3 stops headroom (still very poor).

They give the RGB value of 18% grey in Adobe RGB (1998 ), gamma=2.2 space, as RGB=101. I'm surprised it's that dark although that explains why I've never been able to make much sense of a grey card included in a shot. I'll have to try it outside tomorrow and see what the shot looks like with the grey card at RGB 101.

Film was never based directly on 18% grey in the way digital is. It was based on obtaining a density of 0.1 above film base plus fog with an exposure X stops below the grey card reading i.e. same method Ansel Adams used in his Zone System. Depending on the development time the 18% card could be moved up and down the film in terms of it's actual density. In fact using the Zone System you ignore what the manufacturer claims the film speed to be. I aways found it to be half of what the manufacturer specified. I was using a Pentax Digital Spotmeter.

Trust me using the Sunny 16 rule is a lot simpler

This giving me headache

100% white does not mean how bright something is, it can not be whiter but something can be brighter.
It would be interesting to see if you make the visible 90% white to 50% grey to see if more is captured.
Here with some tweaking off the raw they get 10 stops of information out of the K10D link
That means the headroom is more then you suggest.

Also are we now talking about 18% reflective or luminance????


well the sunny 16 doesn't work any more since that rule is an old one when film are around so if the light meters went from 12% to 18% say goodbye to that rule because it's half stop or so too bright

I still think light meters in the camera are calibrated to 12%
If they really did change then some clever folks must have make a new grey card specially for digital to get the proper exposure.