selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Fireworks are a special case. It's usually best to set the aperture to a fairly small value (f/11-f/22), use a low ISO and an expose of several seconds to capture more than one burst.

Expose for whatever else you want to show in the image (buildings, dark blue sky, foreground) and let the firework trails track over the background.

The nice thing about using digital is that you can usually get it right with a little trial and error.

BebuLamar

It doesn't matter which settings you get the result is the same. If you don't believe me try it.

joderale Loc: Pensacola, Florida

Thank you for all your answers. I've been reading the ugly Hedgehog for about a year and that was my first post. I got a few other subjects I'd like to talk to you all about some time. I'm an amateur that has toyed with photography on and off since I was 15, 46 years ago. Used to have a darkroom and rolled my own Plus X and Tri X, had a Canon F-1. It got stolen and I got a used Nikormatt with a broken lightmeter. I spent a year in Europe with that Nikormatt and used the exposure guides on the back of the film with great success. Now that I can afford it, I'm diving into digital.

The depth of field calculator will be useful. I knew f/32 was probably not necessary and I just did it for overkill to make sure the whole flower was in focus. I know that f/2.8 has a very small depth of field and would not have got it all. But I had no idea f/32 would require such a high ISO.

I should have tried taking a picture of the leaves with sunny 16 to see how it came out. I like the post about not blowing out the highlights when you do that. It seems that you can always bring out the underexposed parts in Lightroom.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

No, but Gene’s response was...

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

The "sunny 16" rule is what I use here in South Florida all the time when the sun is shining. It works 2 hours after sunrise and 2 hours before sunset.
At times it could be off by half a stop but in general I get excellent exposures following it.

As it was mentioned by Bill, it is based on incident metering.

wteffey Loc: Ocala, FL USA

All of the camera's and lenses I have used give the sharpest results stopped down a click or two or three from wide open. Usually this is f4.0 to f5.6. I value sharpness more than anything else so whenever possible I shoot in that range, ISO and shutter to adjust exposure as necessary. What am I missing?

leftj Loc: Texas

There should be no problem with ISO 12800 on a MIV. I don't even have a problem with it on my Fuji X-T1.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Not just in the Sunshine State.

It works the same all over the world once the sun is more than about 20 degrees above the horizon and the clouds don't get in its way.

It's the same sun and the same illumination. Direct sunlight is a constant. Only the scenery changes.

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

WOW, nearly 2 pages and no one has said to look at the Histogram...
Where have all the Histogramers gone...

Best,
Todd Ferguson

leftj Loc: Texas

long time passing

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

Bultaco Loc: Aiken, SC

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I view sunny sixteen as a place to start when you have no meter. Your experience and judgement are critical in getting the correct exposure.

jimorus

Mostly self taught here and learned the expensive way, with film. Sunny F16 gets you in the ball park. It isn't the word of God and I find it isn't as small of a ballpark with digital as it was with film and my desires chasnge things too.

You can meter off the green grass or tree leaves in the same light as your subject
You can meter off the north sky on a sunny cloudless day
You can use weathered asphalt
You can use a faded pair of jeans
When all else fails you can meter off your hand and adjust as necessary. After you know it is + or - a few stops, skin tones do differ, remember it. You always bring your hand

jim

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

It depends on whether you want to do post processing from the raw image or you just want a JPEG straight out of the camera (SOOC).

I took nearly all of these images on Manual at ISO 400, 1/1000 sec at f/11 (1/3 stop darker than Sunny 16, net EV 15) because I knew I would be developing from raw. I opened up to f/8 only when the shadows became less distinct.

The JPEG SOOC versions were very close to right but those two exposure settings allowed me to capture all of the detail and color I wanted without blowing any highlights. Where the shadows were a little dark they were easy to recover and I only needed to do highlight recovery on four of the 175 images.

If I had wanted to not do any post processing at all (SOOC) I probably would have had to watch the exposure a little more closely. But that is hard to judge when the camera's LCD is also in broad daylight.

I did not come to this approach by accident. I used Kodachrome for more than 30 years. It taught me the value of watching out for highlights. It paid off later when I scanned those slides and was able to get back some of the shadow information. We can do that more easily today with a raw digital file.