P3D Re: Anti-meter sentiment in photo-3d?

[Paul Talbot <ptww@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dr. George A. Themelis mentions--again ;) -- his nearly-famous
friend who "used a spot-meter in his first roll and got the entire
roll 2-3 stops overexposed."

If I told you about my first Sunny-16 stereo slides that were
poorly exposed, would you blame Sunny-16?  Here's the situation:
(C C is the camera's lenses)

          C
         C  .        S
               .     u
                  .  b
                     j
    Sun==>           e
                     c
                     t


The sun was off my right shoulder, so I used the standard advice of
adjusting exposure if the sun is to the side instead of directly
behind you, and got over-exposed slides.  I concluded that the
always-talked-about position of the sun relative to the photographer
is not important.  It is the position of the sun relative to the
subject that matters.  After this experience some months ago, I
searched the digests for references to Sunny-16 and read many, many
postings about it.  In all those postings, I found only two
references to the sun-subject relationship, as opposed to the
sun-photographer relationship.  Both of those references were by
BobH, but they were only casual parenthetical references.  One or
both of those parentheticals was a single word.  This is scant
attention for a critical aspect of the Sunny-16 rule!

My other first experiences with Sunny-16 resulted in a severly-
underexposed slide for lack of ability to guess how many stops
to adjust for the shadow cast by a tall office building; and
shots taken toward the sun that are badly over-exposed from
following the open up 1 stop advice.  I am guessing that the
rule of thumb to open up for back-lighting may work for people
at relatively close distances and that sort of composition,
but it ruins landscapes and other wide-open compositions, IMO.

Sunny-16 and meters are both useful.  Both require knowledge,
understanding, and *experience.*  IMO, there is no such thing
as a fool-proof method of determining exposure.  (You could
say I'm living proof, because I've messed up exposures with
every method yet invented!)

Paul Talbot


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