(Leica D-Lux5)To carry on this weeks' theme on tactics in street photography, I offer this picture to illustrate a tactic which seldom goes awry and which many of us have tried. This one best suits settings or places where the sense of privacy is prevasive and going up to ask for permission will be too awkward.
Scout the site and stay ready with the camera at the chosen location. Tune it to zone focusing at f8 for a camera fitted with a APS-C sensor (in the case of cameras with a smaller sensor, don't bother coz you'll have an extensive DOF anyway). Use a priority mode befitting the shooting situation. For today's shot, I just recalled the generic profile used for doing daily street shots which is set to ISO 400 to cater for wider situations and zone focusing at f8.0 to achieve an extensive DOF. Visualise the final image in your mind but DON'T point your camera to the desired scene (people will be alerted and avoid the route) until your subjects walk into it. Snap. Voila.
Once again, as a general rule of thumb, the safest slowest shutter speed is 1/30s to freeze passers-by going across the screen, and 1/20s for those coming towards the you. To avoid blurry images, consideration should also be given to the safe shutter speed on account of the focal length of the lens and the shake correction effectiveness of the camera. But if the image is meant to be blurry for an effect, try from 1/2s upwards when handholding the camera. With a handheld camera, any shutter speeds below 1/2s may result in an image too blurry to be meaningful as far as street snaps are concerned.
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