Saved from 50 megs - site is unstable, images are missing on that site
Return to
Home Page
Return to
Main
How-To Page
|
The
"Sunny 16" Rule and Other Camera Basics
Moon Rules My favorite trick for obtaining a proper exposure of a full moon is to set my aperture at f/11 and my shutter speed at one over the ISO setting. For pictures of a half moon, I use the same shutter speed at f/8. For a quarter moon, f/5.6. Camera Shake Rule Lenses and cameras never used to have anti-shake systems built into them. As shutter speeds got slower, camera shake was likely to blur your image, and you had to know what you could safely get away with! As a rule-of-thumb, the slowest shutter speed at which you could safely handhold a camera was usually considered to be one over the focal length of the lens. So, if you're using a 50mm lens, you could generally shoot at 1/60 sec or faster. A 100mm lens needed at least 1/125 sec. Not enough light to do that? Then you had to use flash, a tripod, or brace your camera (and yourself) against a solid object. Anatomical Gray Card Metering off an 18% neutral gray card is a good way to get a midtone meter reading for good overall exposure of a scene. Don't have a gray card? Hold your open hand up so it's facing the light, and take a reading off your palm. Open up one stop from that, and go ahead and shoot at that setting (note: the variety of human skin tones rarely accounts for even a full-stop difference). Exposure Rules The classic advice is, "Expose for the highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves." This works with slide film (and even with today's digital). But with negative film, especially color negative film, you're actually better off overexposing by one stop. Action-Stopping Rules To stop action that's moving across the frame perpendicular to the lens axis, you need a shutter speed two-stops faster than if the same action was moving toward (or away) from you. For action moving at a 45-degree angle to the lens axis, you can use a shutter speed one-stop slower. Example: If the action of a person running toward you at moderate speed can be stopped at 1/250, you'll need a shutter speed of 1/1000 to stop the same subject moving across the frame, and a shutter speed of 1/125 to stop action if they are moving diagonally with respect to the camera. Sunset Rule To get a properly exposed sunset, meter the area directly above the sun (without including the sun). If you want the scene to look like it's a half-hour later, stop down by one f-stop, or set exposure compensation (if you have it available) to minus one. Other do-it-yourself repair or technique sections are listed below (note - line items in black are still under construction):
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| © 2000-2010 R.L. Herron For Historical Reference | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
