Manual 35mm SLR Camera

I found a Minolta SRT-201 SLR Camera for $15 the other day. I put a new battery in for the light meter and took it out this afternoon. I was able to play with aperture and shutterspeed to keep the light meter needle in the right spot for picture taking. But, does anyone have any good suggestions or general rules of thumb for taking good pictures with a completely manual SLR camera? I'll mostly be taking outdoor landscape pictures.

Sunny 16 Rule

On a sunny day, your lens aperture should be open to F16, and your shutter speed should be 1 over the ASA. And I say ASA since that is the way the Sunny 16 Rule is written. You may translate ASA into ISO to "modernize" it.

In short, on a sunny day, with ISO 400 film, take your picture at F16 and 1/400.

With that as a guide, modify your settings for oter lighting conditions.

But, if you keep the needle in the middle, you should be getting just that exposure.

Otherwise, just click away.

Alex

For landscapes, focus on the distant horizon, or treeline, and back it off a smidgen, as if you were focusing on something a bit closer (hyperfocal).
At f/16, everything in the picture should be tack sharp.

Use the sunny 16 rule, and/or your light meter for the first exposure, and then change your shutter speed 1 click higher for the second, 1 click lower for the third (bracketing).

Use a tripod and a cable release.

Finally, order some Kodak E200, Elite 200, or Ektachrome 200, or Fuji 400X and do some star trails at f/8 - f/16 on the "B" shutter speed with the cable relese locked open for a half an hour or more.

Have fun!