Originally posted by tuco Good deal. Are you adjusting the Sunny 16 Rule for time of year? You need to tune that rule for your geographical area especially at higher latitudes. I'll use my one-degree spot meter to measure some shadows in the summer and then compare to fall/winter and formulate an adjustment rule kind of thing. Similarly for the time of day.
I haven't got that far yet, I'm compensating for time of day in the last couple of hours before dusk. Of the two that didn't work, one was towards a low sun which threw me off, the other was the bridge arches from the other (shadow) side of the bridge (these were more gloomy than I'd expected).
I'm using a two step process:
1) Estimate the aperture depending on how sunny it is (strength & length of shadows).
2) Estimate whether a correction is needed for full-sun-lit, overcast, side-lit, back-lit or in-shadow/deep-shadow etc.
I'm hoping that concentrating more when I'm using a meter will tune things a bit better - but it certainly makes you think more about exposure and lighting.