Sunny 16 rule?

OK, I have read articles about this for days, now let's see if I understand...

This rule is used to help expose properly. The idea is that if it is sunny you set shutter speed to match ISO, and aperture at f/16. From there you would make adjustments based on what you are shooting.

For example, lets say I am shooting with aperture of 22, then I would take my shutter speed down by two stops, so instead of 350 (iso 400 film, my camera has no 400 shutter speed), i would use 180??

Am i understanding this right??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by payn817

OK, I have read articles about this for days, now let's see if I understand...

This rule is used to help expose properly. The idea is that if it is sunny you set shutter speed to match ISO, and aperture at f/16. From there you would make adjustments based on what you are shooting.

For example, lets say I am shooting with aperture of 22, then I would take my shutter speed down by two stops, so instead of 350 (iso 400 film, my camera has no 400 shutter speed), i would use 180??

Am i understanding this right??

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Yes if you are shooting 400 ISO in bright sunlight lit frontally then you would use 1/350 f16. (If the sunlight was coming from the side you would probably be better off using f11 or f8.5)

If you go from f16 to f22 then you are shutting down the aperture by one stop (not two) therefore you need to double the exposure time and you would set 1/180.

Note: modern cameras with matrix metering or whatever are accurate in most situations. It takes some practice to do better by eye

Charles