natural light: project 38

measuring the intensity of light

The brief for this project was to take hourly light meter readings with a shutter speed of around 1/125th of a second from early morning to evening on a bright sunny day then collate the information and draw up a graph to illustrate how the brightness of light during the day gradually increases, then levels out,  and then decreases.  With my Panasonic DMC-FZ18 camera this proved to be a challenging task!  Firstly, I had to set a shutter speed of 1/40sec in order to attain an aperture of F3.6 to be able to allow the camera the capacity to decrease the aperture as the brightness of the day increased.  Secondly, my camera has a  limited aperture range of F2.8 – F8 therefore as the day progressed the shutter speed had to be changed a further two times in order to gain scope for the aperture scale.

Below are the readings that I registered at hourly intervals in the shade as well as in the sun – the shade readings were taken out of curiosity rather than being part of the brief. I did not attempt to make a graph as I felt that the numerous changes of shutter speed readings would make this task rather complicated!!!

SUN                                                                       

7.30 am   1/40 sec       F3.6                         

8.30 am    1/40 sec       F5.6

9.30 am    1/40 sec      F8.0

10.30 am  1/400 sec  F4.5

11.30 am   1/400 sec  F5.6

12.30 pm – 4.30pm      1/400sec  F8.0 ( levels off )

5.30 pm      1/400 sec   F7.1

6.30 pm      1/400 sec  F5.6

7.30 pm      1/400 sec   F5.0

8.30 pm       1/125 sec   3.6

SHADE

7.30 am         1/5 sec        F3.6

8.30 am          1/5 sec        F4.5

9.30 am          1/5 sec        F6.3

10.30 am        1/5 sec       F8.0

11.30 am – 3.30 pm          1/60 sec    F4 ( levels off )

4.30 pm           1/30 sec    F5

5.30 pm           1/30 sec   F3.6

6.30 pm            1/15 sec   F4

7.30 pm            1/6 sec    F3.6

8.30 pm             1/4 sec    F3.6

what I have learnt

(a)  To be aware of the movement and it’s pattern of the brightness of light during the day.

(b) The confirmation that a limited aperture range has limitations in the extremes of lighting conditions.

 

 

 

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