Settings for Street Photography

SeanT

I've purchased the cheat sheets for my D5300 + 50mm f/1.8, and don't see a setting for taking street/city shots. I know there's a setting for landscape/architecture, but it suggests to use a tripod. My intentions are to be walking around. Thanks for any info you can provide.

Sean

bruto

I'm reminded a bit of the famous photographer Weegee's answer to the question of what settings are best, "f/8 and be there."

Seriously, I think for street photography, your main criterion is to get your subject in focus quickly, with sufficient lighting, and a shutter speed that can be hand held without fuss. Your fast 50mm is probably pretty ideal, though many street photographers prefer a wider angle. A 35mm would be a more common choice with DX format, but it depends a lot on taste.

You'll see different answers from different sources on this, but in general, I think your biggest challenge will be to see what to shoot and to capture it, and for settings you need fast focus and a fairly high shutter speed to fight motion blur and your own movement. Some people prefer S, some A, and some P modes for this. ISO is less critical for this than for some other genres, and you should be able to put yours up to 800 or more if need be, to insure good shutter speeds and some depth of field.

You'll probably want continuous servo focusing as some of your subjects will be moving. Avoid multi-area, as that will tend to lock on the closest likely subject rather than what you're aiming at. Try C and dynamic area, and see if that works. A instead of C can work too, in which the camera decides whether the subject seems to be moving. It generally guesses pretty well. The D5300 should do fine, but if you miss shots because the focus is not locking on, you can, on a D5300, choose release priority, which will shoot even if focus is not complete. You can then push the button halfway down to focus, but take your shot as needed even if it's fussing about exact focus. Or you can adopt back button focus, which is focus priority while working, but as soon as you let go of the button, it becomes release priority and makes the shot. Back button is nice if you like to focus and recompose but still need the C tracking feature. If you want to focus and recompose otherwise you must switch to single servo AF.

Try matrix metering first, which will probably work best. If your subjects tend to be far away and seem dark against a brighter background, either compensate in the [+] direction, or switch metering modes. Center weighted will give priority to the middle portion, somewhere around 30 percent, and less to the rest. Spot metering ignores all but the small portion surrounding the focus point, and is probably not best for street photography, as it presumes only the subject gets metered, and the environment is disposable. It's good for a person on a beach or a seal on snow, but not so great if the cityscape is part of what you're after.

One alternative set of settings you could try would be to put the camera in Manual mode, set the shutter speed at something around 1/250 and the aperture somewhere in the f/5.6 or 8 vicinity, and leave Auto ISO on. For normal daylight, this will result in ISO in the middle range. In broad daylight, it will center somewhere around ISO 400. The camera's meter will fine tune ISO only and leave your other settings alone. When it gets darker, you may find ISO going a bit too high, but for daytime it's pretty close to the mid range. When conditions change you can open up the lens or slow down the shutter speed a little as needed.

SeanT

Great! This helps out a ton. I will give all this a shot and see how it goes. Again, thanks for the help.

Sean

SeanT

What about shooting street shots during night time? What settings do you suggest?

bruto

I don't have much experience here.

For night time, assuming you cannot use flash, you will be pretty well stuck with cranking the ISO up as high as you can get away with, opening up the lens, and lowering the shutter speed. You may have to experiment to find what your tolerance is for high ISO noise. The D5300 should, I think, do pretty well, but not likely at the very highest boosted levels.

One can presume that night shots will be oddly lit and often blurry, and that you'll have to incorporate that into your composition. Look for bright sources of light that can form a pool of light surrounded by darkness.

A wider angle lens can help, in part by making shutter speed less critical. You are likely to find a 50mm difficult. Of course a tripod or other support can be a big help here if you're doing architectural and city shots.

If a scene is relatively evenly lit, the camera's meter may try to overexpose it some, and make the dark areas look too light. That can look unnatural, so you can either compensate while shooting, or reduce exposure in post processing. View NX2 allows up to two stops plus or minus without penalty if you shoot in Raw mode. Capture NX-D allows even more. When you lower exposure, you will also lower the noise. Capture NX-D also has a noise reduction feature which might help to smooth out dark areas that look speckled.

You might want to experiment with turning Active D-lighting on or off. That feature increases dynamic range a little, and can help unblock dark shadows, but it also can diminish contrast and make shadows look muddy. If you're aiming for high contrast you might find it better to turn it off. Shadows can be recaptured in post processing programs like View NX-2, if need be.

SeanT

You've been a big help! Thank you.