Sunny 16 Doesn’t seem to work with my T6

The sunny 16 rule is an approximation and cannot be relied upon to test a light meter. There are too many variables involved, sunlight varies throughout the day and seasons it also depends on where you are in the world, then you have the added complication of finding a subject that will reflect the right amount of light.

It can work with an average subject (whatever that is) on the right day and will probably give you an exposure that is +/- 1 stop of correct but then you may need to process the shot accordingly, if you are just going to shoot jpeg and let the camera work it out for you then there is an even greater chance that it will go wrong.

gedansky wrote:

I understand this can be considered an archaic concept, but it is helping me to understand Manual shooting better.

I have my aperture set f/16

no need for f/16 on an aps-c camera. It’ll reduce sharpness more than providing more depth if field because aps-c has 1 1/3 stops more DOF due to using shorter focal lengths

in bright sunlight, and my ISO at 200 and shutter speed at 1/200 and my meter shows my camera as WAY under exposed. the articles on sunny 16 says that this is also a way to find out whether or not your camera meter is accurate. Well apparently mine is not even close.

There’s no need for that old rule because you can see your recorded result immediately and reshoot if needed unlike waiting for processed film prints to see how you did

Before trying this, I would either be in Aperture mode and let the camera handle shutter speed, or manual and just adjust my shutter speed until my light meter leveled off. But plugging in the formulas from sunny 16 should work as well.

I really hope I’m just missing something.

Yep, just use your camera’s metering system, it’s far more advanced than sunny 16

I did go through my camera to see if I had any kind of overcompensated settings but I don’t.

gedansky wrote:

I understand this can be considered an archaic concept, but it is helping me to understand Manual shooting better.

I have my aperture set f/16 in bright sunlight, and my ISO at 200 and shutter speed at 1/200 and my meter shows my camera as WAY under exposed. the articles on sunny 16 says that this is also a way to find out whether or not your camera meter is accurate. Well apparently mine is not even close.

Before trying this, I would either be in Aperture mode and let the camera handle shutter speed, or manual and just adjust my shutter speed until my light meter leveled off. But plugging in the formulas from sunny 16 should work as well.

I really hope I’m just missing something. I did go through my camera to see if I had any kind of overcompensated settings but I don’t.

Any takers?

Thanks!

When shooting M mode, feel free to ignore the camera meter. The camera meter will meter only the central AF region so, depending on what you are pointing at, it'll change (inaccurate, when taken the overall scene).

Sunny 16 rule (taken literal) is applicable only for subjects in a very sunny scene with hard shadows.

Here are some values that I use when I started off, after a bit of researching from Internet:

Applying the same Sunny 16 technique, the values below works great in getting the approximate exposure. Judge the intensity of the light by looking at the shadows.

f22 - Very bright / Sun on Snow / White Sand

f16 - Sunny - deep and distinct shadow.

f11 - Sunny with some clouds

f8 - Cloudy but with soft blurry shadows/golden hours

f5.6 - dark vampire cloudy

f4 - shadows

f2.8 - late evening

So, shooting normally, if you are in Sunny 16 situation, simply change the other values to get the best IQ, for eg. instead of shooting at f16, ISO 100, 1/125, shoot at f5.6, ISO100, 1/1000.
Another example: You are in f8 scene but you want to take a portrait with nice bokeh, at f2. Then, the conversion based on f8 rule will be: f2, ISO 100, 1/2000 (shutter compensates the f stop).
Since light intensity is variable, keep practicing and with more experience, it'll become natural to just look at the light and knowing what to dial in the appropriate values of ISO, shutter & Aperture to get the desired look.