Sunny 16 Rule

[savona]

Many of my shots are taken outdoors in bright sunlight. If you are anything like me you have dealt with your share of overexposed pictures in the past. Well here we will discuss a simple, but very affective rule or guideline for estimating the correct exposure while shooting outdoors, in just about any conditions.

Here is the basics of the sunny 16 rule, applicable on a bright sunny day:

* Set aperture to f/16 and shutter speed nearest to the ISO as possible.

This means if you were using ISO 100 you would set your aperture at f/16 and shutter speed at 1/100 (or 1/125 second on most modern cameras).

Once you learn the basics of the sunny 16 rule you can adjust it to meet your needs. For example, if you choose to have a wider aperture in order to blur the background you can adjust the settings accordingly.

So lets say you are out on a sunny day and you want to snap a photo of your loved one in the park. Because we know the sunny 16 rule, we know that at ISO 100, setting the camera to f/16 and shutter speed to 1/125 second will give us a good exposure. But in this case we want to blur the background which calls for a wider aperture, what do we do? Simple, just increase the shutter speed one stop for every one stop you open the aperture. I know thats a tough sentence, maybe this will a better way of explaining it.

ISO 100 - f/16 - 1/125 sec

will give the same exposure as:

ISO 100 - f/11 - 1/250 sec

Opening the aperture one stop from f/16 to f/11 will allow more light to enter the camera. If we do not change the shutter speed we will get an overexposed image. In order to keep the correct exposure level we must raise the shutter speed the same amount of stops as we opened the aperture. This will work all the way down the line:

Assuming you are using ISO 100 film speed on a sunny day, all of these combinations would work.

f/16 - 1/125 sec
f/11 - 1/250 sec
f/8 - 1/500 sec
f/5.6 - 1/1000 sec
f/4 _ 1/2000 sec

and so on...

Here is a handy table that shows how the sunny 16 rule can be changed to work in any conditions. It might be handy to print this table and carry it in your camera bag.

Set shutter speed to the setting closest to theISO.
Set the f-stop according to the conditons on thistable.
Aperture	Conditions	Shadow Detail
f/16	Sunny	Distint
f/11	Slight Overcast	Soft around edges
f/8	Overcast	Barely Visible
f/5.6	Heavy Overcast	None
f/	Sunset	None

Click HERE to view a printable version.

[Saxamaphone]

im printing this out and putting it in my camera bag. thanks

[WildSwan]

Hmm... it is now etched on my VF.