exposure table

[nsclcctl]

Has anyone seen a table which lists typicalexposures for different conditions? You know, sunny day landscape, typical f stop and shutter speed. Cloudy day, same? I am trying to reason all of this out and wanted to see some examples.

[Bob Nichol]

There are no preferred settings for any given scene. You as the photographer have the creative control over this so do you want great depth of field (f/11, f/16) for scenery or shallow (f/2.8, f/4) for portraits, fast shutter speed (1/500, 1/1000) to stop action or slow (1/15, 1/30) to permit motion blur.

Raise or lower the ISO to get what aperture and shutter speed combination you desire (within limits). Use neutral density filters (usually used for slower shutter speeds or shallow depth of field) to adjust beyond the capabilities of the camera.

Experiment, it's cheap with digital!

Some rules of thumb:

Slow shutter speed (less than 1/60) brace the camera on something solid (tripod, monopod, wall)

Small aperture (f/22, f/32) can degrade image quality.

High ISO (1600, 3200) can introduce noise (coloured speckles) in the shadow areas.

Wide angle lenses (less than 50mm in 35mm effective focal length) are easier to hand hold at slow shutter speeds and permit greater depth of field.

Telephoto lenses (greater than 50mm in 35mm effective focal length) produce shallower depth of field and should be braced, especially the longer ones. Common rule: shutter speed is one over focal length (400mm = 1/400) or faster when hand held.

[inness]

nsclcctl wrote:

Has anyone seen a table which lists typicalexposures for different conditions? You know, sunny day landscape, typical f stop and shutter speed. Cloudy day, same? I am trying to reason all of this out and wanted to see some examples.

As Bob said all scenes are different and you may want to make a different effect than the nex guy, try reading this site ( not all at once )

http://photonotes.org/articles/beginner-faq/

Bob

[Caboose]

check this website, http://www.fotosharp.comthey have several laminated cheat sheets for suggested settings. There pretty cheap too.

[ac.smith]

This is the old rule of thumb. Set shutter at 1/ISO #, set aperature for f16 for bright sunlight, f11 for hazy bright, f8 for cloudy bright, f5.6 for cloudy or shade on a bright day. This was approximately right for any time between 2 hrs after sunrise to 2 hrs before sunset.You can probably still find this chart printed on the inside of a Kodak film box. Of course you can also use any combination of shutter/aperature that hasresults in anequivalent exposure. With ISO 64 some of the bright sunlight equivalents would be [email protected]/30, [email protected]/60, [email protected]/125, [email protected]/250, [email protected]/500. All of these result in equivalent exposure, what you chose would depend on how much depth of field you need and/or the degree to which you need to stop motion or camera shake.

You might try to look for old film era photo manuals and instructional materials as many had tables of exposure suggestions formore conditions than the simple table above. Kodak even had a neat pocket handbook that had recommendations and calculators for many different conditions including night street scenes.