Sunny 16 rule with 400 film: No 400 SS on any of my MF Cameras/Lenses. What to do?

cayenne · Aug 19, 2020

Ok, I'm a noob, and don't quite have half or third stops in my brain yet.

On my 501CM, and GSW690 III and Yashica MAT-124G....the shutter speeds on the lenses at the upper end are 500 and 250.

I"m not able to set in between those....

The sunny 16 rule as I understand it, are at full sun, you set shutter speed == ISO, and your aperture to F/16.

So, if none of my MF film cameras' lenses have a 400 setting, what do I set my SS to and what aperture if my ISO of my film is 400? That's pretty much what I shoot exclusively.....

Thanks in advance,

cayenne

markjwyatt · Aug 19, 2020

1/500 is close enough. If you want and your aperture is continuous adjust, open it 1/4-1/3 stop if you want.

Dali · Aug 19, 2020

The f/16 rule is a kind of estimate to get a decent exposure in sunny condition.

If you expose 1/500 vs 1/400, it should be 1/3 stop difference which is pretty negligeable (I am sure that your shutters are not THAT accurate). In fact, exposure increases slightly when you stop down central shutters. So 1/500 should be more than fine.

If you are anxious, expose 1/250 instead.

Donald Qualls · Aug 19, 2020

Very unlikely the shutter on your 124G, at least, comes anywhere near 500 anyway; it's probably more like 1/300, and the 250 is close to 1/200. That's a guess, but it's the way forty to fifty year old leaf shutters usually roll. But f/16 at 1/300, just as f/16 at 1/500 is equally close to correct (and more likely to be really correct, at least in North Carolina we seldom have days clear enough for real Sunny 16 conditions; it's more like Almost Sunny 11).

Ariston · Aug 19, 2020

For negative film, go with the next slowest speed. For slide film, the next fastest. Either side of 400 will probably work fine, though, as others have said.

Sirius Glass · Aug 19, 2020

Use 1/500 second, that is close enough.

We can tell that you are a wise person because you use a Hasselblad. <<wink, wink>>

Welcome to ~~APUG~~ Photrio!![/center]

Pieter12 · Aug 19, 2020

I believe for ISO 100, the EV equivalent to Sunny 16 is EV 15 (or close to that). So for ISO 400, that should be EV 13 for your Hasselblad.

wiltw · Aug 19, 2020

Sunny 16 is merely a GUIDELINE. If you use an incident exposure meter, you actually will find that the light may actually be brighter or dimmer than the Sunny 16 rule of thumb! Measured with a lightmeter, it might actually measure f/16 +0.6EV, (that is, almost 2/3 of the way to f/22) for example. It can vary with time of day, or when in the year.

IOW, 'it does not really matter that you adhere rigidly to the guideline'!

wyofilm · Aug 19, 2020

The above advice is all correct, but another thing to consider is that f/16 for the sunny 16 rule is the starting point for the aperture. Therefore, you might consider f/22 and one stop slower (1/250) on the shutter speed to give the same exposure. This is a good exercise to do anyway to test your shutter speeds. If your camera shutter speeds are working perfectly well, then your negative should look consistent at multiple shutter speed/aperture equivalent combinations.

For this experiment, use 100 iso film on a sunny day and test the following combinations:
f/22, 1/60 sec
f/16, 1/125 sec
f/11, 1/250 sec
f/8, 1/500 sec

If everything is perfect, then all four exposures will match. As Donald Qualls mentioned above, it is unlikely your shutter speeds will be correct at the fast end. It is good to know if the shutter speeds are correct or not.

The reason you can't really do this experiment with faster film like 400 iso is because your camera doesn't have shutter speeds fast enough to give you more than two data points.

Good luck!

bernard_L · Aug 19, 2020

Your problem is about a 1/3 EV difference. Might be noticeable with slide film. Completely negligible with negative film. You might overexpose TX-400 (50 speed index) by 3 stops and produce a print indistinguishable from nominal exposure, except maybe better shadow separation in the "overexposed" frame.
The official ISO/ASA rating is not supposed (for negative film, again) to be the "best". It is the minimum exposure providing a subjectively near-optimum photograph as judged by a panel of observers. Some will object this is not the current definition of film speed, but ask yourself where the equation with lux-seconds came from? A whim?
For a typical landscape, measured with a reflected-light meter (e.g. Sekonic 308), the "rule" is more like "sunny f/11"; now we're talking a full stop difference, just from the choice of subject... Greenery is just dark.
Buy and read David Vestal's The craft of photography. Less than $10 (used) on that on-line seller of books and other stuff. There you will see that an acceptable print can be produced from Tri-X (old one) exposed at 1-ISO or less. And many other useful notions. Highly recommended.
I used TX-400 in examples because it has a long straight characteristic curve with most developers. Some films are naturally compensating (i.e. have a shoulder within the normal exposure range; google the terms you do not understand). For those films (a minority, e.g. the original Agfa APX-100) one should think twice before massively overexposing.
For color film, see, e.g. this: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...-negatives-using-scanner.151936/#post-1977455
Lone exception: Ektar has a more limited exposure latitude.
Last summer, just for fun, I used a bottom level P&S with consumer color film. The camera has fixed aperture and fixed shutter speed (but a 28mm lens!). When the light is too low if fires its flash. Photos came out OK.

Arthurwg · Aug 19, 2020

Dali said:
The f/16 rule is a kind of estimate to get a decent exposure in sunny condition.

If you expose 1/500 vs 1/400, it should be 1/3 stop difference which is pretty negligeable (I am sure that your shutters are not THAT accurate). In fact, exposure increases slightly when you stop down central shutters. So 1/500 should be more than fine.

If you are anxious, expose 1/250 instead.

Arthurwg · Aug 19, 2020

On the Hasselblad, 1/500 will actually be closer to 1/350.

cayenne · Aug 19, 2020

Pieter12 said:
I believe for ISO 100, the EV equivalent to Sunny 16 is EV 15 (or close to that). So for ISO 400, that should be EV 13 for your Hasselblad.

LOL..I haven't learned EV's yet....but that's on my list.

Ok thanks for everyone's input...with these good suggestions, I'll wing it!!

I had to shoot off a couple of pictures on the end of the rolls and ran to drop them off to get devleped, so, will see what my guesses did at the end of each roll for results.

Thank you everyone!!

C

cayenne · Aug 19, 2020

wiltw said:
Sunny 16 is merely a GUIDELINE. If you use an incident exposure meter, you actually will find that the light may actually be brighter or dimmer than the Sunny 16 rule of thumb! Measured with a lightmeter, it might actually measure f/16 +0.6EV, (that is, almost 2/3 of the way to f/22) for example. It can vary with time of day, or when in the year.

IOW, 'it does not really matter that you adhere rigidly to the guideline'!

The reason I was asking...was that my sekonic last week, had a battery leak that hosed it.
It was a pretty NEW energizer battery and I was very shocked to see a quality new battery do this.

Anyway...needing to shoot off a couple of frames on a couple of cameras to take film to be developed with no meter.

It is bright sunny here and wanted to try to not waste those last exposures....with Sunny 16 rule.

I do understand that is the starting point, but I couldn't start at the prescribed starting point of ISO== SS since my 400 ISO didn't coordinate with a shutter speed I had, so.....
Anyway, again, thank you all for your help.

I ended up shooting at SS == 250 and aperture f/16 and I'll see how those last frames turned out. One image had full sun on it...the other image was of a canal near my house that had trees over part of it, so this will be a good test.

Cayenne

Donald Qualls · Aug 19, 2020

cayenne said:
I ended up shooting at SS == 250 and aperture f/16 and I'll see how those last frames turned out. One image had full sun on it...the other image was of a canal near my house that had trees over part of it, so this will be a good test.

You should be fine.

Wallendo · Aug 19, 2020

Other than FP+, few modern films exactly match up their inverse film speeds to standard aperture settings. For ISO 100 films, I use 1/125s (or shoot an old Leica). For 200 film I shoot at 1/250s, and for 400 I shoot at 1/500s. I also fudge the Sunny 16 rule a bit. If it is really bright I reduce by a stop. And it the sun seems a little off, I overexpose by a stop.

Dan Daniel · Aug 19, 2020

cayenne said:
It is bright sunny here and wanted to try to not waste those last exposures....with Sunny 16 rule.

I do understand that is the starting point, but I couldn't start at the prescribed starting point of ISO== SS since my 400 ISO didn't coordinate with a shutter speed I had, so.....
Anyway, again, thank you all for your help.

Cayenne

Look this page over, gt a feel for what is going on with meters and your eye and light levels, etc.

Also get a notebook and record poyur exposures for every frame. After a few days/weeks/months you won't still need to do this, but if you spend some time now, and then look at negatives and read the exposures used, you'll get a heck of a crash course.

http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm

Sirius Glass · Aug 19, 2020

Arthurwg said:
On the Hasselblad, 1/500 will actually be closer to 1/350.

That depends of the condition of the shutter of each lens. I keep my lenses and cameras regularly serviced.

cayenne · Aug 19, 2020

Dan Daniel said:
Look this page over, gt a feel for what is going on with meters and your eye and light levels, etc.

Also get a notebook and record poyur exposures for every frame. After a few days/weeks/months you won't still need to do this, but if you spend some time now, and then look at negatives and read the exposures used, you'll get a heck of a crash course.

http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm

Oh thank you!!!

That is a really great idea!!!

cayenne

Donald Qualls · Aug 19, 2020

Sirius Glass said:
I keep my lenses and cameras regularly serviced.

Which will make them reliable and consistent, but won't make the fast speeds in a leaf shutter as fast as they're marked.

Arthurwg · Aug 19, 2020

Sirius Glass said:
That depends of the condition of the shutter of each lens. I keep my lenses and cameras regularly serviced.

OK, so what speed do you get at 1/500?

etn · Aug 20, 2020

cayenne said:
LOL..I haven't learned EV's yet....but that's on my list.

I find EV's so much easier. Only 1 number to remember instead of the f/stop + exposure time.
Then you can remember a series of EV for each condition, for instance, ISO 400 and sun => EV 17, shade => EV 15 etc. (which is just another way of saying "sunny 16")
Arithmetics are also so much easier: use ISO 200 film? simply subtract 1 from the EV number you remembered.

I discovered EV when I started using a Hasselblad and now miss it on every other unmetered camera I use (e.g. Leica M3). I have an EV table in my cell phone just for this. Maybe I should just print out the table and attach it to the M3. Or quit using it altogether, medium format is so much heavier cooler

Arvee · Aug 20, 2020

Arthurwg said:
OK, so what speed do you get at 1/500?

Henry, in Controls in B/W Photography, used his Hasselblad/80 Planar extensively in his testing. He periodically checked the shutter speeds to compensate for any errors to be factored into test results. He found the speed on his Planar consistently measured 1/240 for the marked 1/500, slightly over 1 stop slow. The marked 125 measured 1/96 and the marked 250 measured 1/164. He claimed this is fairly typical for between the lens (leaf) shutters. (2nd ed., pp 146)

Sirius Glass · Aug 20, 2020

Arthurwg said:
OK, so what speed do you get at 1/500?

All within specification. I have better things to do then get obsessive about these exact details, but I am sure not of them is off as much as your lens. You should have your lenses serviced occasionally.

BrianShaw · Aug 20, 2020

... and it appears based on your conclusion that so should have Mr Henry. LOL

Sunny 16 rule with 400 film: No 400 SS on any of my MF Cameras/Lenses. What to do?

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