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.
A night out in London. A selection of my street photography from this weekend.
- Thread starter mrk
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Cheers!
Maybe just a crashed bin drive or something
Camera was 5D3 with Sigma 35mm 1.4 DG. An excellent combination for night shooting I'd say!
You should have faith in the 550D
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 
Someone needs to sort out the next London photo meet!
Jake?
Jake???
Jaaaaaaaaaaaaake?
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Man of Honour
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Always inspiring, looking for things that us mere mortals would otherwise miss.
Where these all handheld? Could you include some exposure information for us beginners
Where these all handheld? Could you include some exposure information for us beginners
Caporegime
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Soldato
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I don't mean offense, and I hope it doesn't come across as jealousy - probably because I want to understand why your shots always looks great - but I think it's more the processing and quality of the photos that stands out to me, rather than the composition of the shots. Th all look great though, either way.
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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
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
Soldato
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You know, I didn't mean that to sound as harsh as it came out. I didn't mean to say your composition sucked, or that there was anything wrong with it, just that your photos stand out immediately as I scroll through these pages as they look excellent, regardless of the composition.
Man of Honour
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so they key here was the higher ISO using manual exposure to get a faster shutter speed as possible?
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!
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!
Cheers!
Maybe just a crashed bin drive or something
Camera was 5D3 with Sigma 35mm 1.4 DG. An excellent combination for night shooting I'd say!
You should have faith in the 550D
Someone needs to sort out the next London photo meet!
Jake?
Jake???
Jaaaaaaaaaaaaake?
So I noticed that you are pretty much exclusively on manual for these shots, which makes sense with all the weird lighting you get at night, but how did you know what exposure to use on the fly? Did you take a test shot or two to dial it in and just leave it there to match the ambient (I notice most shots seems to be 1/80 @ 1.4), or did you set it for each individual subject by eyeballing it or going from what the camera suggests?
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
The guessing comes naturally with practice really and understanding where your sensor will fall short
Soldato
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Do you prefer that approach to using Aperture priority, say, and then playing with the EV and ISO settings? Because of the exact control over shutter speed?
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
This applies to most things for me, from smartphones to stuff on my PC to manual gearboxes in cars etc