The Ultimate Exposure Computer - great guide to manual photography...

Sleepy

Just came across this guide for calculating exposure settings whilst delving a bit into the Sunny 16 rule in an attempt to improve my knowledge of calculating correct exposure for a given situation and found this excellent. Pretty much everything you can learn from the ubiquitously recommended 'Understanding Exposure' in a single web-page.

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

I'm sure lots of posters with more experience than me have come across this, or a variant of it but it's a great starting point for someone switching their camera into manual for the first time.

Any of the pros got criticisms / additions to the guide?

Sleepy

Anyone have anything to add to the guide? Even just tips for manually calculating exposure in general?

Lack of control over the metering mode on my EOS 300v has me wanting to be more manual about exposure control settings and I tend to just hazard a rough guess and modify it until I see something satisfactory on the back of my 450D which obviously isn't an option with a film camera!

DaireQuinlan

Sleepy wrote: »

Anyone have anything to add to the guide? Even just tips for manually calculating exposure in general?

From experience here, it isn't so much a sunny 16 rule as a sunny 11 rule. That's for a bright sunny day in summer (ahem). I guess our summer is at -1 ev compared to more southern climes

swingking

From reading the book "Understand Exposure"

I always meter off the blue sky or meter at -2/3rds on green grass. Then view the results and adjust accordingly.

And I would always do this using Center-weighted metering mode.

Sleepy

I'm hoping to use this method to develop to the point where I don't need the meter swingking

I've nearly always gotten nicer results when I've taken full control in awkward lighting situations and I think that getting to the point where knowing the correct EV to expose for and the settings to get that EV almost instinctively would be the first step towards being able to call myself a 'serious' amateur (never mind managing to catch so many of the shots I currently miss).

swingking

Sleepy wrote: »

I'm hoping to use this method to develop to the point where I don't need the meter swingking

I've nearly always gotten nicer results when I've taken full control in awkward lighting situations and I think that getting to the point where knowing the correct EV to expose for and the settings to get that EV almost instinctively would be the first step towards being able to call myself a 'serious' amateur (never mind managing to catch so many of the shots I currently miss).

oh cool. Didn't know you could meter without using the cameras light meter. Nice one

Slidinginfinity

Just noticed this thread and it is just what I need.

Received my Grandfathers Leica III over Christmas and it has no meter, of course.

Thanks for sharing.

melekalikimaka

Slidinginfinity wrote: »

Received my Grandfathers Leica III .

:eek:

now thats a gift!

Ghost Train

I find looking at the type of shadows the easiest way to judge the strength of sunlight, i.e table on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_16_rule

This also seems like a a good guide to 10 different light levels normally encountered