Camera settings for cloudy day (2 Viewers)

HI, need some help with settings for a cloudy day with light drizzle. What should my aperture and F stop be for this weather? Thanks

I think you'd need to tell us what camera and lens you have........

I have a Canon 400D and a 100-400 lens. On a cloudy day I'd have F6.3 or F7.1 maybe and ISO400. If shutter speed is less than 1/200 second I'll bump the ISO up to 800 or dial in 1 stop EV compensation or drop down to F5.6.

It just depends on lots of things.

Sorry about not mentioning camera. Canon Rebel 450D and a 70-300 IS Zoom Lens. There has been lots of cloudy days here. I am wanting to get photos of Eagles and didn't want my settings to mess things up. I'll be taking a lot of flight shots. On a sunny day I use AV Mode, ISO 400, F 7.1. Didn't know if I needed to change or not. Thanks

OK_Scissortail said:

Sorry about not mentioning camera. Canon Rebel 450D and a 70-300 IS Zoom Lens. There has been lots of cloudy days here. I am wanting to get photos of Eagles and didn't want my settings to mess things up. I'll be taking a lot of flight shots. On a sunny day I use AV Mode, ISO 400, F 7.1. Didn't know if I needed to change or not. Thanks

Click to expand...

I have that lens too and it's pretty good hanholding at 300mm with low shutter speeds (1/100 though this is useless if the bird is moving). I'd stick with those settings, F8 would give sharper shots and I'd use that if it were sunny.


For flight shots you can get much higher shutter speeds if you are usually pointing up at the sky. I'd be tempted to use TV mode and set shutter speed at 1/1200 or above and see what happens.

There is a guideline for setting exposure under bright sunny conditions called the "Sunny 16 Rule". The rule is, if shooting under bright sunshine (clear day, no clouds, sun high in the sky) that if you set your aperture to f/16 your shutter speed will be the reciprocal of your ISO. e.g. at 100 ISO you can use a shutter speed of 1/100; at 200 ISO you can use 1/200 etc..

Of course, you aren't forced to shoot at f/16. You could open up 2 stops to f/8 and shoot at 100 ISO and 1/400, as an example. Obviously there are many combinations of ISO, aperture and shutter speed you can mix and match to yield the same overall exposure.

Following on from Sunny 16 there are similar guidelines (although I have trouble remembering them) to make adjustments for different degrees of cloud cover. If you Google for "Sunny 16" you will get plenty of examples returned. Here's one example....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_16

If you have constant lighting levels, not fluctuating from one minute to the next, you can save yourself a ton of grief by shooting with manual exposure. Once you have the exposure set to your liking you can then get on with shooting without constantly worrying about how your composition is affecting the metering. Of course, you should check your histogram once in a while to make sure the light hasn't changed without you noticing, but at least you won't be guessing at dialing in exposure compensation from one shot to the next.

Bear in mind that the "Rule" is really a guideline. For sunny conditions there isn't much room for argument about how sunny it is - either it is sunny with clear skies or it is not. Well the problem comes in figuring out how cloudy it actually is and how much that affects the lighting. So use the "Rules" as a framework and not to stick to rigidly. At the end of the day your histogram will tell you whether your exposure is correct or not.

If you don't understand histograms then try this....

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

Thank you! You both have given me lots to try and absorb. Appreciate the help on this. I should have both clear sunny days and constant cloudy days ahead for the next week so I'll do some experimenting. Thanks again!