ISO/shutter speed advice for sunny days

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Soldato
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Having recently upgraded from a Nikon D50 where anything over iso400 was fairly horrible-looking, I'm now getting to grips with my Fuji X-T10 before I head off to Cuba.

I will try to do some testing myself but I was wondering if anyone could give me some general advice on iso and shutter speed. I generally use aperture priority, but with my 35mm f/2 I'm going to try to avoid to temptation to shoot absolutely everything at f/2 and risk missing focus.

So, Cuba street photography. What settings would you start with? Obviously very dependent on the light but if it's blazing sun and I'm shooting with the light, would you expect iso100 would give me a quick enough shutter speed to do a bit of running and gunning (e.g. firing off a few discreet snaps at people as I/they walk past for example)? Or would you expect to bump up the iso to get a shutter speed high enough to be 'safe' enough to do that sort of thing.

At what iso would I expect to start seeing noise in brighter conditions?

Thanks!
 
I've never really liked the idea of auto iso. a lot of potential to 'ruin' (maybe not quite) good shots if it favours a faster shutter speed over potential noise? I've never used it though so I may be wrong. Or do you use it in full manual? :confused:
 
I'd use full manual* with auto iso.
You're in control of aperture, shutter speed, focus point, metering mode... and it'll just choose the appropriate ISO for what it thinks is the correct exposure based on the other settings.
 
I use Auto ISO most of the time on my XT10 and it's brilliant. You can set a couple of different profiles for it, e.g. 1 could have 800 max, 2 1600 max, 3 3200 max.

It also lets you specify minimum shutter speed i.e. minimum 1/100th before it bumps the ISO up.

Also enable the electronic shutter and you will be able to shoot wide open in the brightest conditions. Be aware that having electronic shutter enabled limits you to ISO 3200 I think.

I pretty much always shoot aperture priority with auto ISO and use the exposure compensation wheel to make adjustments on the fly.
 
Scam said:
I've never really liked the idea of auto iso. a lot of potential to 'ruin' (maybe not quite) good shots if it favours a faster shutter speed over potential noise? I've never used it though so I may be wrong. Or do you use it in full manual? :confused:
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There is no more potential to ruin a shot than any other exposure setting. 99.9% of my hand held photos will be taken with auto ISO and Aperture priority. On a tripod I will be at base ISO

Most camera you can choose the shutter speed ratio in respect to the focal length. By Default I use the standard 1/focal length rule but sometimes I will force faster shutter speeds.


For static scenes then of course you want to be using a tripod and can turn auto ISO off.



I don't think I can recall single example where AutoISo has ruined a shot but of course I must have lost hundreds due to using manual I=ISO and not getting a fast enough shutter or forgetting that its left in ISO 6400. etc.




I also wouldn't worry about noise so much. Far more important a photo is sharp with slightly higher noise than soft and blurry, nothing you can do about the latter but noise can be well controlled n software and doesn't affect web sized photos or moderate prints.
 
Jono said:
I'd use full manual* with auto iso.
You're in control of aperture, shutter speed, focus point, metering mode... and it'll just choose the appropriate ISO for what it thinks is the correct exposure based on the other settings.
Click to expand...



There is rarely a need for full manual mode outside some specific scenarios of if you are doing a lot of stuff with flashes.


There are 3 very common scenarios in photography:
1) You care about the Depth of Focus, either wanting it to be shallow to separate a subject form a background or enhance details, or you want to have sufficient DoF for the scene so everything is in focus. Ether way you only care about the aperture, you don't give 2 hoots about the shutter speed, as long as the shutter speed is fast enough so you don't get blurred images.

2) You care about the shutter speed/exposure time in order to prevent subject motion, e.g. in sports or moving wildlife, or the opposite and you want a long exposure to enhance the appearance of motion, Or you want a specific shutter speed to get blur form airplane propellers but not too much blue, or you want to maximize exposure to get water to blur completely etc. You don't care so much about aperture.

3) i dont care about the DoF or shutter speed, but the photo must be sharp with the lens I am using. This is common when using long telephoto lenses with moderate apertures hand held. e.g., with my Sigma Sports 150-600mm f/6.3, wide open at 600mm gives me sufficient DoF for 90% of photos and if I am photographing static subjects I don;t give a damn about shutter speed as long as it is high enough. This is really a subset of 1), leave the camera in aperture mode.




The more you can safely let your camera do the more time and cognitive energy you have to spend on getting good photos with strong compositions and the higher the chances you will capture your subject doing soemthign interesting. The biggest mistake I see beginners do is assume everything has to be done manually to be a "real photographer", and they spend so much time fiddling with exposure settings or manually fogging getting numerous failures or blurred photos in the process. Professional photographers however let their camera do as much as possible, that is why they spent so much money on the camera in the first place.
 
olv said:
I use Auto ISO most of the time on my XT10 and it's brilliant. <snip>

Also enable the electronic shutter and you will be able to shoot wide open in the brightest conditions. Be aware that having electronic shutter enabled limits you to ISO 3200 I think.
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Is using the electronic shutter just so that you can go faster than 1/4000th? I ended up reading about Auto ISO, I haven't read anything specific to the X-T10 but it sounds in general it is more advanced than I thought. Hopefully I can use those custom profiles to set some up? :confused:

Interesting thoughts DP, I think I agree with your pov. Because I don't shoot much sports, most of the time I am thinking about aperture/dof more than anything so that is where I start with my camera set-up.

I guess the question is now, what I was getting at earlier.. what settings would you expect to use in bright sunlight for taking some nice street shots of people going about their daily business? Like I say, I don't shoot sports so my knowledge on shutter speed is a bit lacking. I know never to go under 1/focal length (i.e. 1/35th as I've only got my prime) but beyond that I'm not sure. Eg. if there's someone walking towards you with a great scene/comp behind them, what shutter speed would you aim for to (a) capture some movement for artistic purposes or alternatively (b) get a good freeze frame so that they are pin sharp?
 
Are the people stationary or moving. If they are stationary then you just need to follow the focal length rule of thumb. bare in mind that it is the effective focal length, ot absolute you want to consider. So 35*1.5 ~= 1/50th. Also, that is an approximation for average people you may find you need to go faster if your hands aren't steady. The rule ialso only gets about a 90-95% keeper rate, if you want more like 99%, then double the shutter speed, 99.9% then double the shutter speed again.


If the people are moving then your shuttering speed will need to increase but it depends on how fast they are moving. 1/250th works for people walking, 1/500th is a starting point for sports.


You probably want to be in aperture priroty with auto ISO, select aperture based on desired DOF. When you see some people being active you want to shoot then increase the ISO.
 
for me:

aperture mode
select aperture i want *usually wide open
keep an eye on the shutter speeds
if not fast enough, up the ISO a bit

rinse and repeat for different lighting conditions

after a while , youll know roughly where to set your ISO based on the available light
 
D.P. said:
If the people are moving then your shuttering speed will need to increase but it depends on how fast they are moving. 1/250th works for people walking, 1/500th is a starting point for sports.

You probably want to be in aperture priroty with auto ISO, select aperture based on desired DOF. When you see some people being active you want to shoot then increase the ISO.
Click to expand...
Thanks, good tips :)

Paul11 said:
after a while , youll know roughly where to set your ISO based on the available light
Click to expand...
This is how I always used to shoot, it was a bit more straightforward on the Nikon seen as I was so limited in iso options. It was literally, 200 for sunshine, 400 for shade/grey days, 800 for anything darker and 1600 forget about it -- way too much noise :p There were no other options physically available on the camera. With a lot more range and usable high-isos on the Fuji I think it's worth looking at auto-iso as suggested.

Next question, probably more relevant to Fuji users but at what iso would I expect to start noticing noise in shots taken in night sunlight?

Also, at f/2 and iso100 on a brilliantly bright sunny day, would I need to go higher than 1/4000 in order not to over-expose? Surely not :confused:
 
Scam said:
Also, at f/2 and iso100 on a brilliantly bright sunny day, would I need to go higher than 1/4000 in order not to over-expose? Surely not :confused:
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Yes you will go over 1/4000. I've noticed no downside of using the electronic shutter so I don't see why you wouldn't enable it. It's fun having the option to shoot at 1.4 on the brightest of bright days.
 
I guess the downside is potential for rolling shutter on moving objects or banding from variable light sources. Are either of those things likely over 1/4000th?

I'd be happy putting it to MS+ES, as I understand in that mode it just uses ES above 1/4000th but I'd be wary of not noticing those issues until I load up my shots back home on a monitor. Reading online it sounds like most people just add that setting to their Q menu so they can enable it in bright sunlight if required.
 
I would say always ISO 100 or Lower in full sunlight ! and shutter speed no less than 1/125 Sec so you don't get any blurr in images, Also one more massive TIP always under expose a shot in light conditions because you can bring back the details in lightroom , Overexpose the the detail is lost.
 
Paul11 said:
for me:

aperture mode
select aperture i want *usually wide open
keep an eye on the shutter speeds
if not fast enough, up the ISO a bit

rinse and repeat for different lighting conditions

after a while , youll know roughly where to set your ISO based on the available light
Click to expand...

This is what I do, and usually sit at around ISO 200-400 for most shooting in good light. I've tried auto iso but it invariably tries to shoot a static scene at ISO 1600 which gives me too much noise and turning it off and on involves several button presses, rather than just one motion to adjust ISO manually. That said it's probably very dependent on the cameras as well. The D800 is going to perform much better at high iso than my D7000, and it may have a better autoISO function as well..
 
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