Photographing along the coast I frequently lose a stop or more from what the
"rules" provide late in a cloudless day (I'm on a west coast, so the rising
sun comes from the land side). This is mostly due to water droplets in the air
that disperse the light, I'm told.
For sunny 16 to work, the subject should be front-lit in bright sunlight. Side
lighting in bright sun is usually best with a compromise of f11 at 1/ISO, and
back-lit subjects can often be somewhat successful at f8 and 1/ISO. It depends
on where one wants detail. With less than an hour, or so, after sunrise or
until sundown, open up one extra stop. With less than ten minutes, another 1/2
to one stop is usually necessary. One compensating option for low light with
slow Zuikos and transparency film is to go to the newer 100 ISO films with
fine grain--a stop more than Fuji 50 or Velvia, two stops more than Kodachrome
25, and they push well to 200 for yet another stop.
All sorts of things can confound the rules of thumb about exposure in addition
to big volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo. I have a photographer who claims all
the turpenes and other plant compounds in the atmosphere of the Blue Ridge
Mountains can steal as much as 1/2 stop. In a heavy forest fire season in the
western U.S., I have lost as much as a stop hundreds of miles from the nearest
fire, and the same happens in areas with smoke from agricultural burning even
though the nearest fire is miles away. In the winter, air pollution in areas
with inversions is an obvious factor. Being lazy, I bracket, though this is
not an option with eagles on the wing.
Carl May
Biological Photo Service
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