{"id":195,"date":"2010-08-25T16:49:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T16:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/?p=195"},"modified":"2026-06-15T01:35:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T01:35:23","slug":"who-says-sunny-16-cant-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Who Says Sunny 16 Can’t Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title is a spoof on this 1959 Popular Science article Who Says a Light Meter Can’t Lie<\/a> I doubt if this was the first article on the subject it certainly isn’t the last<\/a>. Personally I use a good light meter mostly in incident mode. If it lies it’s because of operator error usually because I didn’t make up my mind before I took the shot on what the subject should be.<\/p>\n

One of the proposed solutions is not to use a light meter. If you shoot film you have most likely heard of Sunny 16<\/b> Fred Parker’s The Ultimate Exposure Compute<\/i>r<\/a> is the best reference I can find on the application. Sunny 16 seems to be a good method in normal outdoor nature type photography that is if you have some experience with the light in the location. Normally scattered light makes up only 10% of the incident light but this can change because of reflected surfaces and atmospheric conditions. How hazy, diffused or how soft can be a difficult measurement to make with only the human eye. As it was not a survival requirement us humans are not good at making absolute light intensity measurements, you need experience and references to adequately judge light in many conditions.<\/p>\n

Most of my shooting is done in a city environment where tall building often shade out the sun, where  scattering<\/a> and reflections make up a higher proportion of the light then in the open air. Even here a friend of mine has learned to judge the light mostly correctly but sometimes a couple of stops off. He uses years of experience not sunny 16. In the golden hour<\/a> shooting into the sun and away from the sun <\/a>is one of the best times to get dramatic city scenes. But sometimes he is fooled and is several stops wrong.<\/p>\n

When the sun is at 10 degrees to the horizon on a early fall afternoon in Toronto because of the extra amount of atmosphere or air mass (AM) it has to pass through there is about 1 stop less light then at noon. The science is well developed and you can go here<\/a> to see the math and use their calculator. The factor depends mainly on global position, time and date.<\/p>\n

Shooting into the sun you have to contend with a super bright background (the sun and sky) and reflections of surfaces like pavement, choices like highlight or silhouette. How much reflected light<\/a> is getting back on the subject and so on. Shooting away from the sun both the reflected light and the angle of the subject to the sunlight can make up to 4 stops of difference. The amount of light falling on the subject varies around 3 stops depending on the angle of the sun to the subject. At  10 degrees to the horizon there is about 2 stops lower illumination between the horizontal surface for example a road and a vertical standing structure such as a person. Once again this interactive graphically illustrated calculator<\/a> comes to the rescue to save the reader from having to view my hen scratching.<\/p>\n

Tip:<\/b> I learned to use a incident\/reflective light meter by carrying the meter around with my digital camera. After about a month I could set my digital camera using the meter and get better exposure first time then using the digital: shoot, chimp the histogram and repeat method. At that point I knew I could rely on on the meter for all my film camera. Even with digital I still prefer the light meter in studio and critical lighting conditions.<\/p>\n

Don’t forget that film is usually more sensitive to under exposurer while clipping because of overexposure is the bane of digital cameras.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title is a spoof on this 1959 Popular Science article Who Says a Light Meter Can’t Lie I doubt if this was the first article on the subject it certainly isn’t the last. Personally I use a good light meter mostly in incident mode. If it lies it’s because of operator error usually because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,42,43,2,41,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atmosphere-of-earth","category-light","category-light-meter","category-photo","category-scattering","category-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metrix-x.rraz.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}