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…
Great tip!
I should try that 🙂
Nice tip but….
Surely at ISO 400 the shutter speed should be 1/500 (and 1/1000 for ISO 800)
Will be testing this 🙂
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!
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!
I learnt this “rule” ages ago in a course I did. And it has saved me a few times…
Thanks for sharing!
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.
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
thank you for the tip. I have problems figuring out what settings to use so this will be helpful to at least take the picture using the f16 rule and then experimenting with other settings.