A night out in London. A selection of my street photography from this weekend.

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This is visit number 2 with NickXXX specifically for the purpose of photographing the streets, perhaps it will be a yearly thing let's see :p

I find street photography fascinating, especially at night. The light (or lack of) is a challenge for both camera and user and you tend to find the best scenery during the darker hours too. I visit London often but usually on business or visiting friends/family so don't always have time to spend walking the streets for hours on end.

Last time we walked ~10 miles, most probably more. This time I don't know the mileage but Nick's pedometer app registered over 21,000 steps at the end of it all. That's more than double the number of steps recommended per day for an average adult and all in the space of ~9 hours!

Needless to say, by the time I got home my shoulder was feeling it as were my feet and I'm used to walking around 5 miles a day anyway. Thankfully the weather was brilliant, not too cold, some clouds and most important of all, dry.

Fuelled up with Nando's near Waterloo I felt amped to get into action mode...

Some of these have been posted in other threads so please excuse the repost in here. All but a few were taken on the Sigma 35mm 1.4, even a couple of stitched panoramics. The detail at f8 is really excellent.

1 - @ 17mm. There were lots of people taking pics of this view, how could I do something different? Stitch, stitch with a wangle set :p
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2 - I asked this guy for a little caption, maybe a few words to put on. He said "I don't know what to say" :o
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3 - This guy was in a phone call, best not disturb him *snap snap snap*.
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4 - Looking over one end of Hungerford Bridge wondering what to shoot when suddenly...
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5 - On the bridge. She was very nice and polite, I gave my card with social links so she could grab a copy if she wanted. In fact I gave everyone the same thing after each shot.
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6 - From the end of the bridge I wanted to get a good vantage point without getting foreground objects in the way. This worked out decent.
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7 - Came across this chap doing things with poetry, had an interesting face. I like interesting faces. He said "I have Facebook, you can send me a copy", yes, yes i can!
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8 - This guy was also really polite and cool although he did say my photos would come out too dark!
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9 - Paul and Gizmo. These two were on the same grounds as the National Gallery, the dog was well behaved and playing with the other people doing their thing outside.
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10 - These guys were playing some music on a boombox and doing some popping & locking. It was really cool and they were rather friendly too.
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Here's a quick video of some of the movements:

11 - "I have no idea what anyone's number is!"
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12 - This Rickshaw driver was looking at me as we walked past, he made a camera gesture with his hands, I walked over and took this portrait. He offered us a ride anywhere but ain't nobody got time for dat :p
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13 - A restaurant worker on his break.
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14 - A bus passenger looks out as the bus pauses at a junction for a few seconds.
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15 - The City of London is well maintained, though that's to be expected :p
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16 - Even still, the homeless will find places to sleep.
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17 - And the iBins are not exempt from crashing either.
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18 - The ruins of this church were quite amazing.
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19 - Again, how could I get a slightly alternative view of landmarks such as St Paul's!
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20 - Sometimes you just have to snooze on the spot.
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21 - Even at work!
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22 - Saw a few examples of nice motoring too at 2:30~AM
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23 - The final scene before heading back to Waterloo for the train home.
A26A1866_stitch_Edit_Edit.jpg
 
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Man of Honour
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Thanks all! Sadly the city quietens down as midnight rolls round even on a Friday night so next time I think an earlier start is in order. Will be able to get more interesting faces then :)

Brilliant set. Love them all but in particular the rickshaw driver and the couple walking along the bridge.

What ISO and fstop were you using?

Hi, I used 100-3200 throughout the night - The ones by the National Gallery (8, 9 etc) were ranging from 2500 to 3200 and the others mostly ranged between 800 and 1250 with a couple at 1600.
 
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Appreciate the feedback! Interesting to see what pictures people like over others too compared to my own favourites :p

Street photos is hard work at times but really rewarding!

A store man in Chinatown walked up to us and said "you want to be careful, guys like the ones there will steal your cameras!" :eek: - Guess it can be risky too :D

In shot #18 there was a drunk man too who looked like he was early 20s, he watched us from one of the low walls and sat on one relaxing then said "I don't want to be near you guys" and started talking about some stuff that sounded like conspiracy jumbo. He then ran off into the distance!

Amazing.
 
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I don't think it has a name as such but yeah the style does seem popular and people do use it to varying degrees of intensity - Mine do vary as I find it purely depends on the scene itself. Some don't warrant it at all, some look better with it - I guess it's a preference thing :p
 
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Stunning photos !
Utterly stunning photos!
great stuff indeed - very nice.

Cheers!

I really enjoyed reading this thread. I also figured out my monitor is on the wrong profile (everything looked white-out'd).

Love this shot
http://robbiekhan.co.uk/root/photos/2014_London_Ocukpics/A26A1841.jpg

R8's have so much street presence even now 7 years after they came out! One day...

What camera etc did you use for this?

Looks like someone has been (hack/play)ing with the iBins!

Maybe just a crashed bin drive or something :p
Camera was 5D3 with Sigma 35mm 1.4 DG. An excellent combination for night shooting I'd say!

It sickens me the range that sensor has. I think a night out with my 550D would yield a lot of grainy shots with blown highlights or insanely dark shadows! That said, your eye for a good composition is deeply enviable as well! I love the couple against the paving, and their shadow just makes it. Rocks my world. Awesome **** as usual.

You should have faith in the 550D :p It's still a capable camera and what you may find is that getting the right exposure in the first instance will result in clean usable images even at high ISO! This does require lots of trial and error though. The benefit of full frame is that you have a wider margin of error to play with :D

Someone needs to sort out the next London photo meet!

Jake?



Jake???



Jaaaaaaaaaaaaake?
 
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1, 6, 19 and 23 were with a tripod while the rest were hand held :) I tend to not remove exif data where possible so you can grab whatever exif info you need from any of the pics of course!
 
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Processing plays a part as well I guess. Processing has always played a part even in the film days when people used to spend hours in darkrooms applying mixtures to solutions to get the desired effects or using a specific film brand and roll.

I shoot RAW so processing is always required else you're left with tone neutral and flat images due to the nature of the format but even my processing won't save an image that's exposed or shot incorrectly! Example, I shot just over 200 photographs that night yet have only chosen to keep less than 25 for showing online.

I don't like them all either but I have to accept they're useful images I guess and people may find them interesting, I know what I did wrong with those shots so will learn from them and do better next time!

You win some, you lose some. Just the way it is :p
 
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Depends on your definition of high ISO I'd say. Some folks consider high to be anything above 400, others 800 and so on. You'll notice the slowest hand held shutter speed I had in the above photos was something like 1/40sec and ISO reached 3200 but mostly stayed around the 800-1600 range which is virtually noise free for full frame bodies. I made sure the light meter in the viewfinder wasn’t too far under or over (give or take half stop I guess) in order to allow a margin for shadow gain or highlight detail gain if needed later.

In the past if the exposure was too far out then I found I got undesired artefacts in shadow areas so spent some time in multiple shoots trialling what margins work best to retain shadow detail after post without exhibiting any artefacts such as banding or colour noise at ISOs up to say 4000. At 12,800 you get the ability to freeze some action at night but will need to apply some noise reduction of course!
 
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I tend to guess based on past experiences what exposure to use at what ISO and then observe what the light meter in the viewfinder is telling me once I've input the settings. If it's within a certain margin as mentioned earlier I know that scene is good to go and will stick to those settings until I move to the next scene and repeat the process.

The guessing comes naturally with practice really and understanding where your sensor will fall short :)
 
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I don't know the exact reason really, you can get the same results using AV or TV and simply setting ranges in the camera if supported by the body and making use of exposure comp and exposure lock. I've just been used to manual from the beginning when reading photo magazines which recommended knowing manual mode first then using aperture or shutter priority when the need arises and I just stuck to that and it's now part of my shooting style. I guess I've always been a fan of being in control of everything though and I work faster when given full control.

This applies to most things for me, from smartphones to stuff on my PC to manual gearboxes in cars etc :p
 
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Exposure was already within my margin target so no need to check for that :p

As I say, I work faster in manual as the base has already been set for the scene beforehand so I just shoot at whatever shutter I want and lower the iso or raise for small increments in lighting difference. That's on the fly and you get into the swing of it with time and practice.

With AV or TV I'd have to use exposure lock to take a reading from what I want to expose for, just an extra process I've already accounted for with the margin when shooting manual so saves time.

Different strokes for different folks :)
 
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