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Sunday, August 4, 2013

The f/16 Rule


© Ankit Gajjar - All Rights Reserved

The shot above was taken on a hot summer afternoon, this was the only time I had available to shoot at this location. The strong contrast from the overhead sun was perfect for this shot.  High contrast, repetitive pattern shots, to me, are perfect candidates for black and white photography. I set my tripod on the center of the rails and composed the shot as shown above (the women were an additional touch, not sure where they walked onto the tracks from). 

Since the day was so bright and track ties were reflecting so much light back, the camera meter was giving me completely wrong values. In these sort of situations what I usually do is use the f/16 rule.
The rule states that at ISO 100 if you set your aperture at f/16 the perfect exposure will be achieved at 1/100s. This rule can be interpolated and applied to all apertures. 

@ ISO 100
f          2.8         4           5.6      8         11       16        22
1/x      3200      1600     800     400     200     100      50

The shot above was shot on manual mode at f/11, 1/200s and ISO 100. A one stop graduated ND filter was used to block out the excess light from the sky. In Photoshop the picture was converted to black and white (sepia tone).

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