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

  • Thread starter Thread starter mrk
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mrk said:
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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for street shots i always shoot in av or tv mode purely because most of the time you do not have time to adjust your manual exposore on the fly no matter how quick you are!

sometimes you literally have to just point and shoot or else you will miss the opprtunity.

The man taking a phonecall in the phonebooth, was this the case because i can imagine that if you had taken even 2-3 seconds manually exposing on a 35mm you would have been noticed and that candid moment lost
 
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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Manual isn't as much of a nightmare as you'd think really. In some gigs I find it's best to use manual due to awkward lighting, then you know you can tinker in post if need be. That being said, a lot of the time I have to use AV because the lighting changes so much. It's actually VERY frustrating at times when I have a plan in my head to take a specific style of photo that suits a B&W processing style I want to apply and due to lighting changing it all goes pear shaped :D

Generally I'd say it's as mrk says and it's all experience. When I go to gigs around the area, I get to know the locations and start with what I used in the past. I often see photographers from local papers covering a band and having the problems I had when I first went to the location. I don't think you ever stop learning though as there are so many things that cause problems with exposure at night gigs. Sometimes I just wish it was out in a field at night so the light doesn't bounce around :D

Personally I'm not the quickest at changing settings on the fly, so I only use manual where I've got a lot of control or wiggle room in post.

Also I've decided IS should be illegal except on macro lenses. It's peeing me off on my 70-200 :D
 
mrk, I really like your scenic shots of the city and general building shots. However the street portraits is not working for me.
 
A solid set, although I do think that some of the street portraits would work better with a 5:4 or 7:6 crop due to their composition.
 
Just my Lightroom presets yeah^

I've had a play with alternative crops but always went back to classic! It just sits better with my own style I think.
 
Just seen these mrk - really shows off your talent you have been nurturing over the years.

I wish you lived nearby so I could rack your brain.

Well done.
 
Great photos!
The first photo just reminds me of Crackdown on the XBOX360! :D Just 'shop in some green agility orbs on the corners of the buildings to complete. You even have a stunt-ring in the background :D
 
Cheers all! Again, always interesting seeing what different people take on different photos.

Crackdown, not played that but I remember doing one for GTA few years back!
 
These are my own presets, some have adjustments in some modules lifted off from VSCO though.
 
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