Best settings for street photography Nikon D5500

Lamtek09

Hi Moose and all. I was wondering if you could assist me with settings to use on my Nikon D5500 for street photography. I have a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens and purchased your cheat sheet, but I did not find anything on street or city photography. Any help on settings would be great. I love your site and your YouTube page. Regards from a supporter and learner all the way from Australia.

PBked

Hi @LAMTEK09,
Street photography is great fun and your 50mm lens will certainly be very useful. Be aware though if you want to include people in your street photography you will be up close and personal with a 50mm lens and, therefore, the idea of candids goes out the window. You might want to consider a good telephoto lens also.
As for settings you need to be using aperture priority. First, for those nice out-of-focus backgrounds, your f/1.8 will give when wide open, and second, enough depth of field when stopped down. If these are going to be your first foray into street photography then I wouldn't suggest going fully manual at first. Choose aperture mode and let the camera choose the shutter speed. I would also use auto white balance and auto ISO.
Street photography can be very dramatic if you also consider the use of black and white instead of color. I am not familiar with your camera, but most modern cameras have a black/white setting.
Hope this gives you some food for thought although I am sure others on this forum will offer you ideas.
Regards,
PBked

bruto

I would agree with the above, with the addition that some street photography requires a fair distance, so the 50mm may not be so bad as far as people are concerned. In a DX format, that's a very mild telephoto, and pretty good for street. Add to that that a good sharp 50mm may allow a good bit of cropping on the dense D5500 image, and you may find it quite versatile. It may depend a little on what you're shooting, and on how shy you are. You'll still be pretty obviously shooting people when you do it, and it takes a certain level of brass to do this effectively. But do remember that although it's always best to frame a picture in the camera, you also have some cropping options when you can't.

Depending on light and other conditions you may get into a pretty high ISO. Black and white conversion can be a good workaround when high ISO begins to look a little noisy, as there is only the coarseness of grain without color. I can guarantee that the D5500 has a black and white setting, which will be in the Picture Control menu.

If you shoot in Raw mode you can change the Picture Control afterwards. If you shoot JPG you're stuck with what you choose, but in Raw, you can shoot in color and switch to B/W later, or vice versa, without penalty. Some people suggest shooting in B/W because it's a good way to see the overall contrast and composition in the camera, without the distraction of color.

If you're doing architectural photography, or including architectural details, be a little careful about keeping the camera level to avoid perspective distortion of buildings unless you are seeking it. Of course it's kind of dramatic to shoot up and see that exaggerated perspective in tall buildings, but it can be a distraction in smaller amounts if you're just shooting from a little too low. If necessary shoot a little wide so that you can perform distortion correction in post. Many programs allow for this, but when you do it, the image will be cropped to keep it square, so if you expect to have to crop for this, make sure you've left a little room.

Lamtek09

@PBKED and @BRUTO, thank you for the advise. I am doing a mini trip in a few days, so I will test out your suggestions. While on the topic, any ideas where I can buy some black and white filters?

bruto

You don't need black and white filters, really, as these can be simulated by the camera. If you go to the Picture control menu, you'll find the options there. There are additional filter effects available in post processing.

The exception is a polarizer, which can only really be done with a polarizing filter. That's useful in both B&W and color to reduce glare. If you get one, make sure it's a circular polarizer (circular in this case meaning the way it processes waves, not the physical shape of it), or it will mess up AF and sometimes AE. Lenses that rotate when they focus are inconvenient to polarize, but the later kit lenses should work fine, as will the 50mm.

For street photography, generally, you probably don't want much initial filtration, because most of the color filters will have odd effects on skin tone, though green can help with skin tones. For scenery, yellow and red can help with skies especially. In monochrome, the effect of a polarizer in intensifying blue skies is less necessary, since a color filter can do it.

You're probably better off leaving them off, and shooting in Raw mode, where you can play with them later. You can even do some of that processing in the camera, though the camera's display may not give you a really good idea of what the final picture will look like when larger. But you can to Raw processing in the camera, and it will save the results as JPG files without overwriting.