The Life-saving F/16 Rule for Landscape Photographers
Categories: Shooting
Written By: lightstalking
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:
March 16th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Great tip!
I should try that :)
June 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Nice tip but….
Surely at ISO 400 the shutter speed should be 1/500 (and 1/1000 for ISO 800)
Will be testing this :)
November 7th, 2009 at 7:02 am
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 16th, 2009 at 7:32 am
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!
July 14th, 2010 at 8:55 am
I learnt this “rule” ages ago in a course I did. And it has saved me a few times…
Thanks for sharing!