Quote: Am I getting somewhere here??. . . if I were to be in an open field, with the just the sky above, and a big three in the middle, casting its shadow somewhere, using the Sunny 16 as my guide,will give me a correct exposure, no? Or same setting, using my TTL meter in my K1000 and pointing it at the three, the light that the meter would read would be from the incidental light given by the sun and therefor be correct?
Getting there? Certainly seems so. You're asking the right questions. Hang in there - experience counts.
I've often wished that Kodak film boxes had never published the Sunny Sixteen guide because it suggests that somehow bright sun and f-16 are the critical point of the matter. SS is nothing more than a memory aid that aperture and shutter speed have a reciprocal relationship and that offers a generic description of daylight conditions perhaps more appropriate to the family Kodak Brownie box camera of the '50's than modern cameras.
Let's break down your question a bit. First, where
you're standing has no bearing on the matter, it's all about the light on your
subject and how you evaluate it as applied to your goal(s) for the image. Within reason, it's
your goals that define 'a correct exposure'. Did the end result accomplish what you intended? (And, yes, after post-processing too, whether in digital or a wet darkroom.)
As a caution here, we need to recognize that the term 'incidental' (incident) lighting has a very specific meaning for metering. Briefly,
incident light is when you meter facing the light source(s) compared to
reflective light which is metered as it's reflected from the subject itself. Both types have their uses.
Using SS is a personal evaluation of the light, the desired result, the gear used and combined with experience. It can be the perfect solution . . . or not.
Then we must take into account the four possible types of electronic metering in use.
Light meters come in many forms, incident, reflective or combined, hand-held and TTL. Each of them have but four modes.
- Spot metering which may vary from about a 15 degree cone to a 1-degree pencil beam. Using it require metering many critical points in the scene and compiling a desired average exposure that, hopefully, neither clips highlights or shadows. Spot metering arguably requires the most experience.
- Averaging which samples the
entire scene and provides an indiscriminate average exposure recommendation. If not tweaked, it may be less useful than an educated SS guess.
- Center weighted averaging which gives more weight to selected zones within the scene. Not a bad choice for many scenes. It often biases the top quarter of the image and the corners as appropriate for snapshots, landscapes and 'family group' photos in consumer level auto cameras. This is most like your K1000.
- Multi-zone 'auto intelligent' metering which samples many discrete zones in the scene, recognizes typical patterns of light, and biases exposure on its best guess of the scene. Sort'a like face recognition. That's typical of most modern auto-TTL metering bodies. When it's right it equals expert SS decisions.
Modern electronic metering may also allow you to bias the exposure to favor higher shutter speed for action or smaller apertures for depth of field as for landscapes. This is simply automatically applying SS reciprocal exchange settings in the camera. (that's what Scene Modes do, too; they apply recommended biases and tweaks to 'normal' exposure settings)
As for your question, yes, the K1000 would provide a meter reading for a reflected (not
incident) light solution for the scene. BUT... it would be a center averaged reading of ALL the light seen TTL. That may average out OK for you - maybe not.
A better solution would be to close in and meter off of only the primary subject and manually lock that solution before recomposing the scene. Or, if that's inconvenient, meter off of a nearby equivalent subject in similar lighting.
Any modern DSLR serves as a fine handheld meter with the dual advantage of an immediate image preview with histogram and 'blinkies' assistence. Matching film shots one-for-one with digital images is a great learning tool. You have twin images with
digital EXIF data for comparison - something not available with film.
You do need to first calibrate all gear and meters to the same standard. A clear or hazy mid-day north sky works well as a cross-calibration light source. Cameras may be synced by tweaking the ISO dial or, on bodies that read the cassette matrix, just use a calibration cheat-sheet. This may take some homework before hand.
[ One really nice, comprehensive resource is Bryan Peterson's book "Understanding Exposure" -- often found used on Amazon books ]