Sunny 16 rule

As a follow-up to my series on the Basics of Manual settings, here’s a quick and awesome tool for reading light without a meter.  On a sunny day, in direct sunlight, at f16: Your shutter speed will be the reciprocal of your film speed. 

ISO 100 = f16 at 1/100th.  ISO 400 = f16 at /400th.

You can easily extrapolate on the Sunny 16 rule.  If you’re using a pinhole or a Holga with a fixed aperture, just work from Sunny 16 out.  Here’s other apertures that use the film speed/ISO rule of Sunny 16.

f/22
Snow/Sand
f/16
Sunny
f/11
Slight Overcast
f/8
Overcast
f/5.6
Heavy Overcast
f/4
Open Shade/Sunset

Pretty useful for analog photography.  Next… a Lomography post!

Shasta Betty