Techniques Moments of Light Morning Glow Sunny 16 Rule Why Use a Tripod?

Camera meter going out? Batteries failing? You can still get a good rule of thumb exposure from your camera by evaluating the sun conditions and knowing your film speed.

Simply put, in bright sunny conditions you can often get a reasonable exposure by setting your camera to f16 aperture and an exposure length of 1 / film speed. In other words, if you are shooting 100 speed film, set your camera for f16 with an exposure of 1/100th of a second. Shooting 400 speed film? It's faster, so you would expect the exposure time to be shorter. And it is if you set your camera to 1/400th of a second.

While not perfect, this is a good approximation. Hopefully you remembered to buy and pack an extra set of batteries so that this will never be a problem.