How did they do it?

PHOTOTONE said:

...It is interesting to note that the Sunny 16 rule seems to be more Sunny 11 nowadays. Wonder why? I can confirm that my transparencies in bright sunlight work more often at Sunny 11 with shutter speed as ISO of film.

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Depends on where you are on the globe and the time of year. Sunny 16 doesn't work in the mid latitudes in winter - never did. It does work pretty well around this time of year if the weather is clear from around 10 AM to 2 PM. Outside of that it's f/11 or less.

jstraw said:

I'd be interested in performing a similar experiment with my meter and someone that claims they can do what HCB claimed he could do. I'm not going to argue over anecdotes and I'm not going to call anyone a liar. I'm a skeptic and I would enjoy being proven wrong through empirical, rather than anecdotal evidence, that's all.

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I will tell you that I can get by without a meter very well...that means in varying light and contrast conditions. I know, having talked to a number of other experienced photographers that my experience is not unusual. This happens after one makes many, many exposures.

With my film and developer of choice with large format I can say that most of my exposures will be F22 at 1/2 second with normal luminance. F22 1/2 at 1/2second for low contrast. F 16 1/2 at 1/2 second for high contrast...development times are then varied for each of the variances in lighting conditions.

I personally don't believe in stopping a lens down unduly... preferring instead to do accurate camera work.

All-Auto on today cameras is in coincidence with a way of thinking today. More buttons better, easy of use better, "new and improved" better, more functions (probably never to be used) better, ..., all to immitate scientist... That is world today (partially). Look inside at some dig. "cameras", Jesus Christ will get confused. It all actualy do not have anything in comon with photography but more with marketing, "new", and again with way of thinking, and how to get money form mass of people. And true people today accept such an offer.

And how they made it in past? very simple. They used their own brain.

www.Leica-R.com

I started out with a Nikon F2AS and then an F3 back in '77 so I used the built in meter most of the time. But in '85 I don't have either camera any more so I made do with a beat up Minolta SRT-101 with a bad meter so I don't use the meter at all. In the years between '85-2002 I had good percentage of good exposures with the SRT. My trouble started in 2002 when I bought the Nikon F5 with its highly touted matrix meter and then I started to have a very high percentage of bad exposure. After 5 years of fighting with the meter I now going back to shooting manually sans meter and use a spot/incident meter when the lighting gets tough.

Chan Tran said:

...highly touted matrix meter and then I started to have a very high percentage of bad exposure. After 5 years of fighting with the meter I now going back to shooting manually sans meter and use a spot/incident meter when the lighting gets tough.

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Absolutely! With a 'dumb' meter, you soon learn what corrections to make. With a 'smart' multi-sector meter, you're always trying to second-guess the person who designed the metering algorithm...

Cheers,

R.

More thought on this.

"How did they do it?" often they had no choice!

In retrospect, I think I'd probably been shooting for several years before I ever even HAD a meter. All the cameras I had as a kid were meterless, old hand-me-downs and stuff I'd find at thrift stores: Argus C3, Konica II, and the first SLR I managed to scrounge up cash for, a second or third hand Nikon F which I kept until I was 22 or so. I also had my TLR but I never trusted the meter on that. I learned some good numbers for basic teen subjects: school interiors, the gym, the football field, and I just ran with them.

I wanted a meter, sure. They were just too expensive. Used light meters were essentially a non-entity. They last forever. And a new one would have cost more than my whole camera.

When I could afford it, I shot slide film. My mom recently sent me some of those old pix that were cluttering her basement, and I know they were made well before I ever had a metered camera.


I didn't have a working handheld meter for another 10 or 12 years after that.

I don't think this is all because I have any sort of great skill at reading light or having "perfect pitch for exposure" or whatever. I think it was just something I had to learn to have ANY pictures, so it came first as a foundation that I learned to ignore.

You could ask the same sorts of things about any older era: how did Timoth O'Sullivan get his exposures, and on massive glass plates that he transported to difficult places and hand-coated on the spot, no less? At least later photographers had durable, flexible film with industrially-consistent ASA numbers.

http://www.fujifilmusa.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/bin/AF3-203U_Pro160S_Product_Information_Bulletin.pdf

The exposure guide Fuji provides is Sunny 16. If it's in print it must be true

I apologize in advance for bringing this thread back after I thought it was dead, but I had to share this. I couldn't resist. I have been thinking about how the great photography masters shot such incredible images without in camera meters or automation and I decided to give it a try. I went out shooting this weekend with my new to me Nikon F with standard, unmetered prism just using the sunny 16 rule (I used ISO 400 film, so I went with 1/250 instead of 1/125 for shutter speed). I am happy to report that the images were way better than I expected!

Granted, none will get me the Pulitzer, but I am referring to accurate exposure, contrast, and color rendition (yes, I caved and shot color film, ISO 400-I am not worthy of unmetered B&W just yet). Since it was just an experiment, I dropped off the films at a local drugstore near where I was shooting (I never used that place before and stumbled upon their one hour lab as I was buying baby formula).

I was in disbelief when I picked up the rolls. They were well exposed. Even the shots I took in the shade, indoors, and "action shots" of my kid having fun at one of the many tourist traps in Kissimme, Florida. I though that the drugstore lab tech had helped me when she printed my negatives, but I checked the frames and they were actually well exposed to begin with!

The interesting thing I noticed though was that I changed my shooting technique for this recent experiment. Instead of arriving on scene as I usually do with my F3HP turned off, switch the camera on, look through the viewfinder and set my exposure according to what the camera reads, I actually found myself changing the aperture ring automaticaly whenever I walked into a different lighting situation. In other words, If I had just taken a shot outside under the bright sun at 1/250 at f/16 and walked under a shaded area, I would open the lens up to f/11 or f/8, compose, focus, shoot. If I walked indoors I would open the lens up to f/4 or 2.8, lower the speed to 1/125 or 1/60 depending on the combination of lighting inside. As I walked outside again under the sun, I would change the speed back to 1/250 and aperture to f/16 automatically anticipating the next shot. I felt I was more aware of the change in lighting at every moment. I was a strange yet pleasurable experience!

I want to keep on experimenting (maybe I just got lucky this time) in different lighting conditions without the meter. Maybe I just think more before I take each shot now?

snegron said:

The interesting thing I noticed though was that I changed my shooting technique for this recent experiment.

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Snegron:

This is a really good sign, but it is dangerous too

I have this really bad habit - I'll be driving down the road and see an interesting scene, with photographic potential. Instead of doing what I should be doing (paying attention to the road conditions, the traffic, the pedestrians and safety in general) I'm exclaiming things like "Plus X at box speed, 1/125 at f/11".

Quite rightly, my wife berates me .

When you start seeing the light, and not the meter reading, your photographs get better.

Paradoxically, when you start seeing the light, your use of the meter becomes more valuable as well. The meter starts to inform your judgment, rather than restrict it.

Hmm - maybe "start seeing the light" would be a good signature line.

Have fun (and watch the light).

Matt

You just made my day! You're the proof that with a little bit of experimentation, our minds can be great tools, even though they are not of industrial-grade precision all the time. I love too the feeling of changing aperture or shutter speed BEFORE lifting the camera to my eye.

One thing I've discovered by using sunny rule, is that outdoors light is perhaps the easiest light to work with. It's constant, plenty bright, more or less directional depending on the day, but it comes from one place only and will give you only one type of shadow patterns at a time. A light meter becomes useful when you start mixing together many areas of light and shadow (your eyes get fooled in evaluating levels), but for the alternating sun/shade shooting, sunny rule and two to three stops of correction, and that's it!

Your next assignment will be to repeat the experience with a roll of slide. If you need cheapy expired film in order not to waste 20$ on a roll of Provia (!), I'm your man. I have a large stash of 35mm E200, which is the perfect film for experimenting. When you see the chromes exposed at sunny rule projected or on the light table, you will be proud.

As a naysayer in this thread I want to report that curiosity got the better of me and I've been practicing "Sunny 16" since my Bronica arrived and with very good results.

I still have a hard time imagining how I would assess exposures after sunset or indoors. The sun is indeed a constant, known quantity. Other light sources, not so much.

Are there useful rules of thumb for times when the sun is absent?

jstraw said:

As a naysayer in this thread I want to report that curiosity got the better of me and I've been practicing "Sunny 16" since my Bronica arrived and with very good results.

I still have a hard time imagining how I would assess exposures after sunset or indoors. The sun is indeed a constant, known quantity. Other light sources, not so much.

Are there useful rules of thumb for times when the sun is absent?

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Indoors, normal domestic lighting after dark, 1/30 at f/2 with EI 400. Obviously there are immense variations from this but after very few pics you start to add or subtract a stop (or more) without thinking.

Outdoors, after dark (outdoor restaurants, street performers, etc): wide open, for the longest shutter speed you're reasonably confident you can hand-hold, EI 100 to 400. An astonishingly wide range of exposures gives acceptable results after dark.

Cheers,

Roger

mhv said:

... our minds can be great tools, even though they are not of industrial-grade precision all the time.

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Industrial grade ain't so hard. Analytical grade is a lot harder. (See thread elsewhere on chemical qualities for mixing devs).

Seriously, though, I agree wholeheartedly with your post.

Cheers,

R.

Roger Hicks said:

'Worked out in his head' is the key. You don't measure the light; you compare the lighting plot with others stored in your memory. At that point HCB's trick is really quite easy.

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As your eyes compensate for the light levels, I think it is the change in contrast which you see in varying light levels rather than the actual amount of light to enable good estimates of exposure. I think the sharpness of shadows helps as well.

Steve.

jstraw said:

Are there useful rules of thumb for times when the sun is absent?

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Google on the "Ultimate Exposure Calculator."

It's a free spreadsheet with almost every imaginable exposure on it.

I've used it often, when in a situation where my meter just couldn't be used: school play, full moon over white snow landscape, city skyline at night. It's always been spot-on or within a stop. When I find somethnig in it that's not spot-on, I edit my copy and get on with my life.

Daytime shooting is really easy, with practice. Full sunlight is EV-15, sunset is about EV-11. A guesstimate between those two extremes (shadows) isn't going to be all that far off.

Steve Smith said:

As your eyes compensate for the light levels, I think it is the change in contrast which you see in varying light levels rather than the actual amount of light to enable good estimates of exposure. I think the sharpness of shadows helps as well.

Steve.

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Dear Steve,

I think it's almost all memory. You know that this sort of lighting (these bulbs, this space, these distances from the light) requires this sort of exposure, and refine it from there. I don't think you 'measure' light in any sense at all -- because, as you say, your eyes compensate anyway.

Cheers,

Roger

DougGrosjean said:

Google on the "Ultimate Exposure Calculator."

It's a free spreadsheet with almost every imaginable exposure on it.

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I found it a few years ago: http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm

I have a few copies of the tables (scroll down the page) laminated and kept in camera bags.


Steve.

I personally like the Exposure-Mat, it's the sunny 16 table made into a slide rule:

http://expomat.tripod.com/

I have a feeling that the badly exposed photographs these Masters made never made any books...EC

eclarke said:

I have a feeling that the badly exposed photographs these Masters made never made any books...EC

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After this brief experiment this past weekend, I must disagree. This is my first serious attempt at capturing images based on the sunny 16 rule and all the frames were well exposed. This was my first real shot at this method after so many years of in-camera metering. I can imagine that the old masters did this every day, several times a day. It had to have been second nature to them. My guess is that exposure for them was not the problem, it was capturing the image that had visual meaning to them that was a challenge. Even if they were off by a stop or two, the lab techs could easily correct this. For those masters that did their own developing, I think they probably had even more control over their final image.

I compare it to a physics professor who sees basic mathematical formulas as mere tools in his mission to prove his theory. What might seem complicated to most of us is just basic knowledge for the true masters of yesteryear. Not only did they know exposure values instinctively, they even used lighting variations to their advantage to enhance the overall mood of their images. They used all the tricks we use today minus the automation we have come to depend upon.

In the early 1980s I was shooting color print film with a Konica TC and my favorite 35/2 Hexanon. The mercury battery just stopped working about half way through the roll. I knew the sunny 16 rule and I also had the handy sheet which came with the film. When the film was developed both halves of the roll were equally well exposed. I am using a hand held meter more now because none of my medium format SLR cameras have meter prisms (yet). If I shoot slide film I bracket more even though that uses up a lot more film, especially in the 6X7 format. With the lattitude of the color print film I can get good results even if my technique with the hand held meter isn't perfect. I have fun with the medium format cameras and I am not using them for fast action or long distance photograohy so speed isn't a problem.

I do not feel that that built in meters in my 35mm cameras make me lazy. Built in meters can be as useful and as accurate as separate meters. You just have to know how to use them. When I use my Canon F-1 cameras I try to meter a medium tone in the scene with the 12 degree spot meter. Then I recompose and shoot, without changing the settings. If I use a camera with center weighted metering like a Nikkormat FT2 or a Minolta X-700I use a different technique and I try not to let a bright sky influence the reading too much. I may tilt the camera downward a little and get a better meter reading that way. A built in meter is not some kind of crutch. It's a tool. If it's used properly it can help us get good results.

They've republished that great classic on MJ's blog:
http://theonlinephotographer.com/the_online_photographer/train_your_brainto_guess_.html

Mark the comparison between the non-system and the Zone System, about midway.