32 Better Available Light Digital Photography
Bee ready—always take your camera with you. These beekeepers were
hired to move a hive that had established itself inside a wooden sign near
an offi ce and condominium complex. Here again, subject matter wins out
over great lighting. The bees in sunlight show up nicely against the dark
background, and yet they also show up well against the lighter street and
the highlighted portions of the beekeeper suits. A good rule of thumb if
you stumble upon a situation like this: if you can hear the swarm, you’re
probably too close. Barry retreated to the safety of his car several times
when the bees came buzzing his way. © 2007 Barry Staver.beginning of the chapter. One guesswork method relied on the
data sheet that is packaged with each roll of fi lm, providing basic
exposure guidelines for taking photographs in bright sun, hazy
sun, or cloudy conditions. The other widely used method was
based on the fi lm’s ISO rating and the aperture f/16 (a.k.a. the
“Sunny 16”) rule. To take a photograph in bright sunlight, the
camera’s aperture was set to f/16 and the shutter speed that came
closest to the ISO number. For instance, if you were using 125
ISO fi lm, the sunlight exposure would be 1/125 of a second at
f/16. The correct exposure for 400-speed fi lm would be 1/400
of a second at f/16, but because most cameras didn’t have a
1/400 shutter speed, the closest speed—1/500—was used. When
in-camera metering was introduced, it worked only in Manual
mode. There were no automatic, program, aperture, or shutter
preferred choices to select. Photo graphers still had to adjust the
shutter speed and aperture themselves.Digital camera technology relieved us of the guesswork methods
of checking exposure for most common lighting situations. In