Too cheap to buy a light meter?

[ScottMcC]

Use your camera's built in light meter!

set iso to 25, shutter to 1/60, and the f stop correlates with the fc as follows:
2.8=200, 4= 375, 5.6= 750, 8=1500, 11= 2800, 16=5000

be sure you use a white sheet of paper as your target, not the plant, or you will get bad numbers.

of course, the sharp shadow/soft shadow/no shadow trick works well in conjunction with this too!

[Bolero]

Very interesting Scott and thanks for sharing that information with us. We can use it for reference in the future.