Street Shots 1-2-3: Three

This week, we've been looking at some of my personal experience in taking street shots. This is the third post.

(Three Talk: The fruit traders are talking to an acquaintance at a cul-de-sac. I was actually crossing a road when this shot was made. Without a chance to pause my steps for the shot, I pre-metered the scene by checking out the lit street before crossing the road and settled with the high shuttle speed lest my movement blurred the image)

Yesterday, we got down to the nitty-gritty of some of the customised settings I used for taking street shots of human conditions. Today, let's continue to dig into the rest, viz., the focal length at 28 and the ISO at 200.

Focal Length

My impression is that on most of the recent serious impacts, the zoom range falls on below 28mm to around 140mm. I stored 28mm as the default focal length setting for street shots of human conditions for two reasons.

First, my experience shows that a street shot of people done at 24mm normally spread the viewers'attention across the whole scene because of the prospective afforded by the 24mm focal length. So, a 24mm is not ideal. On the other hand, as the shots are taken at an estimated holding position with me on the move, the 35mm length is the farthest I can use or the subject will be left partly outside the frame. So, for this kind of street shots, I stay pretty much on 28mm.

(Three-Way: The shot was taken underneath a flyover accessible only by jaywalking. Sometimes, a shot of people going separate directions makes the contents in the final image richer for contemplation. The next image is also a case in point)

Second, in case I need the lens to go wider or farther, 28mm is the most convenient way point. The additional advantage on the GX200 is that user can customized the zoom to fixed hopping from 24mm, 28mm to 35mm(then 50mm to 75mm). One quick press up or down on the zoom buttom is quick enough to give a timely response. ISO 200 To general scenes, ISO 200 is well suited. ISO 400 was said to be a journalistic ISO in the film era because it can cope with slightly darker scenes without sacrificing the brighter ones. But in the digital era, when changing ISO is a matter of some button presses rather than a swap of films or cameras loaded with the right ISO film, I would say that the ISO 200 is truly middle-of-the-roader. In fact, the ISO 400 is sometimes undesirable on a sunny day because of its restriction laid on a slow exposure combo, hence limiting the camera's ability to blur the subject or background.

(I Noticed You: How can you tell if this shot was made with the flash on or not? You will know by simply checking out the reflected glare on the signposts in the background. Not hoping to use the high ISO, I turned the flash on. Since the scene was pretty dark and the flash was on, the shutter speed became irrelevent in freezing the subjects)

Since changing ISO is a few presses away, in difficult lighting situation, my workflow is usually 1) to pre-meter the scene and tweak for an exposure combo and 2), if necessary, dial up or down the ISO value and 3) pre-meter the scene again for the camera to show up other exposure combos based on the my previous combination. This is the quicker way to minimise the chance of losing the scene.

Otherwise, as a rule of thumb from my experience: ISO 64 on well-lit streets during daytime; ISO 200 for shaded areas; ISO 400 for indoor areas; ISO 800 in a well-lit subway. If you go up to ISO 1600 and the compact is fitted with a small sensor, you may settle for black and white to cover up the high ISO chromatic noise. The noise in black and white at high ISO looks just tastefully grainy in the final image. (No Peddling: The three men in uniform are the peddler control officers responsible for, as their post title suggests, keeping the peddling areas spick and spain and rid of unlicensed hawking acitivities. The signpost was included to hopefully strengthen the theme)

Knowing the setting is just a start. The next thing is how do I approach the subjects and take the shots, which will left to to another post. Stay tuned.