Education Field Instructional

Quick Tip: Remember Exposure Values in Different Lighting Situations

Chris Gampat
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09/27/2014
1 Min read

Last Updated on 09/27/2014 by Chris Gampat

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Back when I still had my photography training wheels and still mostly shot film, I developed this instinct to always change my aperture and shutter speed based on the environment. In New York, it’s not uncommon to walk from a building’s shadow to bright sunlight within a couple of feet. So instead of constantly relying on my metering then changing the settings, I would remember approximate values. This lead to me actually losing less opportunities to get the shot that I wanted instead of fumbling with my metering.

For a long time, I thought I was the only one who did it and I instilled that value into the rest of the site’s staff. But a video that I found on YouTube seems to reiterate exactly what I learned. A photographer wanted to use an old film camera that didn’t have a light meter. So what we had to do was learn the differences in the shadows and lighting then adapted his settings to the situation and location.

This is the simple concept behind the Sunny 16 rule, but it isn’t as exacting. Instead, you’ll get estimated values and you can then fix all the rest in post-production.

Check out the video after the jump.

aperture exposure film metering Shutter Speed sunny 16
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.