--> Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label dufaycolor

A Predecessor to the Sunny 16 Rule

While perusing an old photography magazine on Archive.org I found an early predecessor to the Sunny 16 rule we use today. The magazine was published in the Summer of 1937. We can learn a lot about photography from looking at this table. For one many of the shutter speeds will look somewhat different than we are used to. Modern shutters use fractions like this: 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2. If you picked up a camera of this era, for one, the shortest speed: 1/1000'th would have been a fancy camera. Many cameras of the era maxed out at 1/300, or 1/400. Most cameras also used a slightly different scale too: instead of the more modern 1/4 they veered to 1/5 and went up from there to 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/200, 1/400. Another thing to note (go to the original magazine article, link supplied) and you will see a wide variety of films. None of the films listed exist today. Most of the companies are now only footnotes in photographic history. And