At one time in that far away previous century, we photographers, before the advent of the automatic camera relied on an old rule called the f-16 Rule. This was a method of using the correct exposure on a sunny day. There were other additions that gave you exposures for shooting under a tree on that sunny day and exposures for cloudy days.

The f-16 rule stipulated that on an object or person being hit by mid-day (and quite a bit before and after) the correct exposure was f-16 with the shutter being the reciprocal of the ISO rating of the film. So if you were shooting with 100 ISO film your correct exposure was 1/125 at f-16. This did not mean you were forced to use that particular f-stop and shutter speed. The law of reciprocity also allowed 1/250 at f-11 or 1/60 at f-22 (and so on upwards and downwards.

I am not much of a street photographer but sometimes when stuff happens and you happen to have a camera around your neck you shoot after quickly setting your camera.

This snap of a woman inside a Honda Civic I took at 1/125 at f-11in August 1981. The film was Kodachrome 60 so that should explain why I set my camera at that exposure.

Kodachrome – Paul Simon