The 1-3-5-10 Rule

rurikw · Apr 20, 2021

es einfach machen wenn man es kompliziert machen kann? Rollei seems to think with their interpretation of the 1-2-4-8 chart. They seem to recommend a whole stop more exposure than the sunny 16 though they mix subjects and weather and it's not always unambiguous. Note that their reference is 18DIN/50ASA rather than 21/100. + they tell you to vary exposure by time of year (nothing about the winter months though) and time of day which I guess makes some sense as travelling through more atmosphere would weaken the light? In that form it would seem to be geographically limited to x degrees south and north of Braunschweig so we really should have a chart with sun angles and exposure values. With these and this 'new' interesting 1-3-5-10 rule I never heard about before, things start to look a bit all over the place. I recently tried to go by sunny 16 on some test shots with a Balda folder but have no idea about the outcome as the films are currently out for development.

riveredger · Apr 20, 2021

Autonerd said:
David1961 said:

I guess whether someone chooses to use any of the "rules/guides" for setting exposure depends on what they want to get from the exposure and whether they are shooting raw or jpeg.

Click to expand...

I still think you're missing the big picture, David. It's not merely about using a rule to set exposure; it's about using a rule (guideline might be a better word) to understand the luminance of your scene, from which you can derive your exposure, rather than relying solely on information from the meter. Both the human brain and the meter can be fooled, but the meter can't interpret the data in front of it ("This is a dark street," "This is a whitewashed building," etc.), but the human brain can.

If you can look at a scene and (correctly) approximate its exposure value, you free yourself from errors in the meter (and can truly shoot manual, if that's your thing).

Use both together (meter and your own good sense) and you can better find the exposure that best fits your needs.

Use the meter only, and, well, you can always fix in post when it's wrong.

Aaron

Trebor1 · Apr 20, 2021

rurikw said:
es einfach machen wenn man es kompliziert machen kann? Rollei seems to think with their interpretation of the 1-2-4-8 chart. They seem to recommend a whole stop more exposure than the sunny 16 though they mix subjects and weather and it's not always unambiguous. Note that their reference is 18DIN/50ASA rather than 21/100. + they tell you to vary exposure by time of year (nothing about the winter months though) and time of day which I guess makes some sense as travelling through more atmosphere would weaken the light? In that form it would seem to be geographically limited to x degrees south and north of Braunschweig so we really should have a chart with sun angles and exposure values. With these and this 'new' interesting 1-3-5-10 rule I never heard about before, things start to look a bit all over the place. I recently tried to go by sunny 16 on some test shots with a Balda folder but have no idea about the outcome as the films are currently out for development.

See previous thread : (Continued discussion -- Sunny 16 rule ) with this same image and noting the use of Sunny 11 rather than Sunny 16, as was the standard practice pre-1960. The use of month, time and latitude, as additional input parameters, goes back to at least 1901 but probably earlier, although the Ilford exposure calculator of 1892 didn't utilise latitude.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/65062045

The assumption that exposure meters work on the basis of an18% scene reflectance is incorrect, as explained in the article below - It's not 12.5% either although Canon, Nikon and Sekonic do use a meter K factor of 12.5 (not the same thing but confuses quite a few)

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/articles/conrad-meter-cal.pdf

Given that Lat-Long, Time and date are all available on smartphones, these could easily be utilised in a more sophisticated version of the Victorian exposure calculators.

Autonerd · Apr 20, 2021

David1961 said:
I have answered that question in several posts in other threads that you have participated in. If you are genuinely interested in the answer, I am sure you are more than capable of finding my posts containing the answer.

Or maybe even download the 90D manual where the answer also exists ;-)

My answers have apparently annoyed the Powers that Be, David, but it comes down to this: Reading your earlier answers, you don't (or at least until recently didn't) understand the difference between histogram and light meter. So now that I've pointed out that they are two different things... you're welcome!

Aaron

PS, nothing in the 90D manual about how one can "meter" after the camera has already metered the shot. But I'd love to see the reference if you want to steer me towards it.

Autonerd · Apr 20, 2021

riveredger said:
This sounds like it should make sense, but it really doesn't. The built-in meter and the histogram are much more effective tools for determining exposure than a human/subjective interpretation of the scene.

Well, histogram isn't so much a tool for determining exposure as it is a tool to determine how much light you can put on the sensor without losing information (ie blowing out highlights or looking info in shadow). Shooting by the histogram will generally require some correction in processing/post. Reflective meters are better than ever but still subject to error, and much more so for those of us who still shoot film. The human eye "equalizes" light better than a camera does (to our detriment as photographers), but knowing the conditions and corresponding exposure values is generally helpful.

Remember, the amount of light falling on your scene is one thing; the amount of light reflected into the camera meter, and how the meter interprets (or misinterprets) that, is another thing entirely.

Aaron

David1961 · Apr 20, 2021

Thank you again for your opinions but I disagree for the reasons I posted earlier

You seem to be struggling to cope with people who can set correct exposure for their needs quickly without the need for any guiding rules.

Overrank · Apr 20, 2021

rurikw said:
es einfach machen wenn man es kompliziert machen kann? Rollei seems to think with their interpretation of the 1-2-4-8 chart. They seem to recommend a whole stop more exposure than the sunny 16 though they mix subjects and weather and it's not always unambiguous. Note that their reference is 18DIN/50ASA rather than 21/100. + they tell

21 DIN was 80ASA in the early 1950s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_speed#/media/File:ASA_DIN_conversion_table.jpg and 18 DIN is 40 ASA, so that table isn’t really “Sunny 11” (as was identified before the phrase Sunny 16 seems to date from the 1980s)

rurikw said:
you to vary exposure by time of year (nothing about the winter months though) and time of day which I guess makes some sense as travelling through more atmosphere would weaken the light? In that form it would seem to be geographically limited to x degrees south and north of Braunschweig so we really should have a chart with sun angles and exposure values. With these and this 'new' interesting 1-3-5-10 rule I never heard about before, things start to look a bit all over the place. I recently tried to go by sunny 16 on some test shots with a Balda folder but have no idea about the outcome as the films are currently out for development.

FrancoD · Apr 20, 2021

With the Sunny 16 bit, it might help some to know that 5this was the type of instruction printed on the inside of film boxes :

this for a 100ASA film.

rurikw · Apr 20, 2021

Yes and I think it's the best of all charts I've seen for quick reference.

Trebor1 · Apr 21, 2021

Overrank said:
rurikw said:

es einfach machen wenn man es kompliziert machen kann? Rollei seems to think with their interpretation of the 1-2-4-8 chart. They seem to recommend a whole stop more exposure than the sunny 16 though they mix subjects and weather and it's not always unambiguous. Note that their reference is 18DIN/50ASA rather than 21/100. + they tell

Click to expand...

21 DIN was 80ASA in the early 1950s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_speed#/media/File:ASA_DIN_conversion_table.jpg and 18 DIN is 40 ASA, so that table isn’t really “Sunny 11” (as was identified before the phrase Sunny 16 seems to date from the 1980s)

Overrank said:

you to vary exposure by time of year (nothing about the winter months though) and time of day which I guess makes some sense as travelling through more atmosphere would weaken the light? In that form it would seem to be geographically limited to x degrees south and north of Braunschweig so we really should have a chart with sun angles and exposure values. With these and this 'new' interesting 1-3-5-10 rule I never heard about before, things start to look a bit all over the place. I recently tried to go by sunny 16 on some test shots with a Balda folder but have no idea about the outcome as the films are currently out for development.

Click to expand...

You have to be careful when comparing the Old DIN scale with ASA because of the different methodologies used to determine the film speed. ASA uses the fractional gradient of 'straight line' portion of the characteristic curve at a fixed gamma, whereas DIN uses a density value of 0.1 above film base plus fog, when the film was developed for maximum contrast, known then as "Gamma Infinity". DIN changed their methodology after 1957.

Loading…

www.rangefinderforum.com

The table shown above is close to Sunny 11 (one third of a stop difference) because it indicates f/11 at 1/50th of a second, rather than 1/40th., in the second group of scenes.

The LVS (EV) system was in use from the late 1950s, with coupled aperture and shutter speeds, such as on the Hasselblad 500C (1957). Sunny 16 is EV 15 in this system but was this commonly regarded as the 'correct exposure' for bright sun (not on sea or sand) in contemporary publications, when using an external lightmeter with this scale?

Autonerd · Apr 21, 2021

David1961 said:
Thank you again for your opinions but I disagree for the reasons I posted earlier

You seem to be struggling to cope with people who can set correct exposure for their needs quickly without the need for any guiding rules.

Not a struggle at all, though I do wonder why someone wouldn't want to learn alternatives. Still curious as to whether you knew the difference between a light meter and a histogram, but I guess we may never know!

Joe Bagadonuts · Apr 21, 2021

Do we really need rules and math equations in modern cameras to figure exposure? I think you all just like math minutia more than photography.

Autonerd · Apr 21, 2021

Joe Bagadonuts said:
Do we really need rules and math equations in modern cameras to figure exposure? I think you all just like math minutia more than photography.

I think we can all benefit from thinking about the light hitting our subject rather than the light being reflected into our camera's meter. As I've said repeatedly (yes, yes, I can hear you all groaning!), I wish I'd been imbued with that understanding earlier in my photographic journey. Learning to evaluate light has reduced the number of times I ask my camera, "Now why did you do that?"

Overrank · Apr 21, 2021

Joe Bagadonuts said:
Do we really need rules and math equations in modern cameras to figure exposure? I think you all just like math minutia more than photography.

Isn’t a modern camera mostly a load of rules and maths equations ?

David1961 · Apr 21, 2021

Thank you for your opinions

Autonerd · Apr 21, 2021

You, my dear David, are very welcome, as always.

David1961 · Apr 21, 2021

robert1955 · Apr 22, 2021

Overrank said:
Joe Bagadonuts said:

Do we really need rules and math equations in modern cameras to figure exposure? I think you all just like math minutia more than photography.

Click to expand...

Isn’t a modern camera mostly a load of rules and maths equations ?

No

robert1955 · Apr 22, 2021

Joe Bagadonuts said:
Do we really need rules and math equations in modern cameras to figure exposure? I think you all just like math minutia more than photography.

I think [hope] most in this thread are here to share historical material. If there is one thing I think we can learn from this, it is that there obviously was a need for work-arounds when you had no meter and that these tools can help as long as you do not expect high accuracy. Apart from expecting interpretation of the light from the photographer, they also differ between them.

They also tend to include "ISO", but that was a rather different beast [three headed actually] with film.

robert1955 · Apr 22, 2021

rurikw said:
es einfach machen wenn man es kompliziert machen kann? Rollei seems to think with their interpretation of the 1-2-4-8 chart. They seem to recommend a whole stop more exposure than the sunny 16 though they mix subjects and weather and it's not always unambiguous. Note that their reference is 18DIN/50ASA rather than 21/100. + they tell you to vary exposure by time of year (nothing about the winter months though) and time of day which I guess makes some sense as travelling through more atmosphere would weaken the light? In that form it would seem to be geographically limited to x degrees south and north of Braunschweig so we really should have a chart with sun angles and exposure values. With these and this 'new' interesting 1-3-5-10 rule I never heard about before, things start to look a bit all over the place. I recently tried to go by sunny 16 on some test shots with a Balda folder but have no idea about the outcome as the films are currently out for development.

Nice to see. I think latitude should also be included

The 1-3-5-10 Rule

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