The Life-saving F/16 Rule for Landscape Photographers

By Light Stalking on 16 Mar 2009 in Shooting[ 8 Comments ]

For a lot of us, landscape photography is one of our favourite past-times. Being out with nature doing the hobby you love, really is something we enjoy.

It can get a little frustrating if we’re not producing the standard of shots that we would like to however.

Luckily, there’s a quick and easy rule that can save your daytime landscapes (or any other daytime shot for that matter), at least in terms of exposure and light.

It’s called the f/16 Rule and is sometimes known as the Sunny 16 Rule.

It’s basically a way of ensuring a reasonable shot under sunny conditions without recourse to a light meter.

The basic rule states to shoot at an apperture of f/16 with a shutter speed of 1/125 when shooting on ISO 100 film.

Or f/16 with a shutter speed of 1/ISO setting (or as close as your camera settings will allow)

For example, let’s say you were shooting on 400 ISO film.

The formula would be f/16 and 1/400 speed.

With ISO 800, it would be f/16 and 1/800 speed.

Just in case that still doesn’t make sense, try out these other links on the f/16 Rule:

The Sunny f/16 Rule
And on Wikipedia
And one more…

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Tags: f/16

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8 Comments

Ilan:

Great tip!
I should try that :)

March 16, 2009 at 11:29 pmReply
Mark Towner:

Nice tip but….

Surely at ISO 400 the shutter speed should be 1/500 (and 1/1000 for ISO 800)

Will be testing this :)

June 11, 2009 at 12:22 pmReply
adrian geronimo:

great tip. the shutter speeds and f stop coordination actually make a lot of sense.
F16 is the same f stop we used to study the hyperfocal distance in school a couple of weeks ago. but this article just put new light to why we were restricted to that number, specially with the 1/ISO concept. well done!

November 7, 2009 at 7:02 amReply
Debbie:

Tried this as soon as I read it, lol. It works well at 400, I will try it at 800 later. Thanks for the tip!

November 16, 2009 at 7:32 amReply
Luciana:

I learnt this “rule” ages ago in a course I did. And it has saved me a few times…
Thanks for sharing!

July 14, 2010 at 8:55 amReply
newbiephotographer:

What if your camera can only go as low as f/8? Would lowering the equivalent shutter speed to half work?

Let’s say at f/8 at ISO 100, equivalent shutter speed would be 1/50?

Thanks for sharing BTW.

July 20, 2011 at 4:43 amReply
- adamlau:
  
  f/16 to f/8 is 2 stops apart(f16 to f11 to f8), so you would need to adjust your shutter accordingly, 1/100 to 1/400 or 1/500
  
  September 10, 2011 at 7:52 amReply
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[...] Use the Sunny f/16 Rule as a Yardstick – If you don’t know the sunny f/16 rule then it’s a good yardstick for shooting in bright conditions. It probably won’t work [...]

August 1, 2011 at 10:30 pmReply