Kodachrome exposure questions

[Jeremy Lunt]

Hello all,

Tomorrow being the Fourth of July, and since I live in a New England coastal town, me and a friend of mine are going to the local beach to shoot some footage with Kodachrome 40 for splicing into a student film we're working on. I've just gotten a new Super-8 camera (Nikon Super Zoom 8) that I haven't used before, and it has both automatic and manual exposure settings. My question is this: I have heard that a very narrow aperture opening is needed for filming in snowy conditions during daylight hours, because a lot of light reflects off the snow and into the camera, but will the same be true for filming sandy beach locations? Sand also has a reflective effect, although maybe not as extreme as snow. The weather forecast says that tomorrow should be bright, clear, and very sunny. I am just wondering whether I should trust the camera's automatic exposure settings, or if I should manually set them?

Thanks for any help you can give on this.

[firestorm_bsf]

Dude,
Go manual all the way. Because it will be dark, your auto exposure will be thrown off when the fireworks go off. I'd say open the aperture up as much as possible.
But that's just me.

Good luck