Re: Sunny 16 versus meters

[P3D Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxx>]

George Gioumousis wrote:
 
> Suppose, as an example from the animal kingdom, you (say male) are at an
> isolated beach and are photographing a naked young lady with a Minolta
> Maxxum.

This raises a deeply philosophical question, George. Is a naked young
lady with a Minolta Maxxum _truly_ a young lady?  8---)


> Anyway, my point is that the f/16 rule is often adequate, and that sometimes
> better than even a pretty good meter.


Adequate, yes. Sometimes better, well...

I would contend (and so I suspect would Adams, who had absolutely no use
for incident readings) that the sunny-f/16 rule can never provide more
accurate exposure than a properly used (that is, meter + brain)
reflected meter for still photographs. Movies are a different story.

Incident readings, or incident rules/charts, cannot provide information
on how much reflectance is in each portion of the scene, and without
this information we can't make an informed exposure placement of this
reflectance within the contrast range of the film. While we can guess or
estimate the reflectance, which is what you were doing in your examples,
metering it will be more accurate (if of course it is metered properly).

The exposure equation which was pounded into my brain:
meter + brain + minimal bracketing = consistantly good -> excellent
exposure

As it relates to rules and tables, perhaps:
tables + brain + substantial bracketing = good exposure most of the time


Eric G.


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