Having your camera settings established and ready to go allows you to become more attuned to the scenes and subjects you are shooting. This applies whether you’re recording buildings and the overall ambience of a city or you’re more focused on the people within it.
In this article we look at the different camera modes you can use and provide advice on framing shots, drive mode settings and the importance of managing backgrounds.
Spontaneous shots like this are only possible if your camera and lens are set up for the conditions.
There are no hard-and-fast rules that guarantee effective compositions so it’s worth experimenting with different viewpoints and framing strategies. How you frame shots will affect how others view them and you can use framing to lead viewers’ eyes into and around the frame.
This carefully-framed ‘bird’s-eye’ shot records a moment of contact between passing strangers.
A low-level viewpoint contrasts the silhouetted people against the city sky and distorted buildings.
Instead of pointing your camera straight ahead, try some different viewpoints like ‘bird’s-eye’ and ground-level views. Look for situations in which there are interesting foreground/background relationships and take advantage of the framing aids that are available in even basic smartphone cameras.
Camera settings
Regardless of where or what they’re shooting, most photographers prefer one of three shooting modes: programmed auto exposure (P), aperture-priority auto exposure (A or Av) or shutter-priority auto exposure (S or Tv). The one you select depends on your situation.
The mode dial, outlined in red in this product image, lets you select which shooting mode to use. (Source: OM Digital Solutions.)
In the P mode, the camera balances all three parameters to achieve what have been designated ‘optimal’ settings. In this mode, the camera’s on-board computer selects the lens aperture, shutter speed and ISO setting (if ISO Auto has been set).
Unlike full auto shooting, in P mode you can over-ride any setting. The P mode is a good choice in situations that are evolving rapidly, where you want to keep shooting without having to fiddle with camera adjustments. All you need do is frame the subject and shoot.
Most systems only set the widest aperture in dim lighting since it can restrict depth-of-field and because the sharpest images are usually recorded between one and two stops down from the maximum aperture. The shutter speed is usually restricted to the slowest achievable with minimal camera shake, and ISO settings are kept close to the ‘native’ ISO setting to minimise image noise.
An interesting combination of camera settings was used in this P mode shot, which was taken with a 50mm lens at ISO 400 using an aperture of f/4 and shutter speed of 1/240 second. The resulting image contrasts the stillness of the main subject in the centre of the frame with the suggestions of motion surrounding her in the advertisement on the bus shelter, reflection of the scene behind the photographer, and the bus itself.
If you know you’ll be shooting at night or in dimly-lit conditions, you can control the range of the Auto ISO mode beforehand by setting limits in the camera’s menu. Cameras with M4/3 and APS-C sensors are usually relatively noise-free up to ISO 3200, while those with ‘full-frame’ sensors can go as high as ISO 6400 (or even higher) before noise becomes an issue.
Smartphone cameras with fully-automatic capture often perform very well in low-light conditions due to sophisticated in-camera processing. Many will record a rapid burst of shots and combine them to deliver a single image that is relatively noise-free – but it can take a few seconds for the capture-and-processing sequence to be completed.
In the A mode, the photographer sets the lens aperture while the camera determines all the other settings. This setting is used if you want depth-of-field control when you’re recording street portraits and shots of buildings.
Using a wide lens aperture keeps the depth-of-field relatively shallow when you want to isolate a subject. This works well for portraits and for separating a subject from a potentially distracting background.
The lens was stopped down to f/9 to keep the reflections in the tilted window sharp in this image taken with a 50mm equivalent lens on an APS-C mirrorless camera.
When you’re photographing scenes and buildings you can stop the aperture down to f/8 or f/11 to ensure as much as possible of the scene appears sharp. Focus on something roughly one third of the way between the camera and the most distant object you want to have sharply focused.
Shutter-priority AE is normally used for motion control. Select a fast shutter speed when you want to ‘freeze’ movement and a slow one for motion blurring.
If your camera and/or lens comes with built-in stabilisation you can obtain some interesting results when you select a shutter speed that is fast enough for you to hand-hold the camera without causing camera shake, but slow enough to blur rapid motion. An example is shown on this page.
This two-second exposure was recorded with shutter-priority AE and required ISO 1600 sensitivity to allow adequate depth-of-field. Note the motion blurring of the human subjects in the scene.
Smartphone tips
Smartphone users get the best results by sticking with the main lens for most (if not all) shots. This lens usually has the highest resolution and records onto the largest sensor in cameras that have several sensor chips.
Your smartphone is a good choice for capturing community activities like protests and quick ‘grab shots’ of urban landscapes.
Depth-of-field is seldom an issue with smartphones due to the small sensor and lens – but if the camera has a background blur mode you may need to disable it to keep the scene sharp. If your phone’s camera has a Manual mode that lets you adjust the lens aperture, stop it down a couple of notches to optimise depth of focus.
If using a small aperture requires a slow shutter speed, built-in stabilisation is useful. Cameras with raw file recording should record a wider bit depth, which gives you a chance to adjust overexposed highlights and darkened shadows when you edit your shots.
Focusing
Modern autofocusing systems are complex so it’s worth spending time scanning through your camera’s menu pages to find out precisely what settings are provided and working out when and how you can use them. Missed focus is often blamed on the camera and/or lens – but the most common cause is the camera user.
When a subject is moving fast or the scene is changing quickly you may not have time to fiddle with focus settings, which is why you should know which AF setting to select for the situation you’re in before you begin shooting. Study the options your camera provides in the relevant section of the user manual. Then try them out so you know how they perform because focus tracking on many cameras is not always precise.
Wide area AF with face detection and tracking made it easier to capture this shot of runners in Circular Quay in Sydney.
Most cameras include the following selectable AF area settings:
– Wide area AF, which uses all the focus points and works well for subjects like streetscapes. With this setting, the camera usually focuses upon the closest clearly identifiable object located in the central area of the frame.
– Zone AF, which uses a smaller selection of points. (Many cameras include a Flexible Zone AF mode that lets you move this area around the frame.)
– Spot AF and 1-point AF provide precise AF point selection for situations where extreme precision is required.
Selected points light up in the viewfinder to show you the zone in use. If your camera has a joystick on its rear panel you can use it to move the focus zone around the frame to lock onto an area you want to keep sharp. In cameras with touch screens, touch AF achieves the same objective.
Subject detection and tracking functions are normally worth using. Many cameras include face-detection AF, often with face and eye detection that can lock onto the faces or eyes of human subjects. Some also include AF modes for tracking humans (eye, face, head, body), animals (eye, body), motorcycles (helmet, bike), cars (body, grille/helmet), trains (cabin, body) and airplanes (nose, body) that track the subject as it moves across the frame.
These modes are extremely useful for photographers who photograph people. It’s also common to have access to focusing aids such as magnification and/or peaking.
Zone focusing was used for this quick ‘grab’ shot of a street artist in Ueno Park in Tokyo. The lens was pre-set at 60mm with a focused distance of two metres and an aperture of f/5.6 in A mode. The camera selected a 1/60 second exposure at ISO 200.
Another option is zone focusing; which means selecting manual focus and pre-focusing the lens to a distance from the camera where you expect the action to happen. This works best with a relatively wide-angle lens and is much easier if you stop the lens down to between f/5.6 and f/8.
With a 35mm wide-angle lens at a camera-to-subject distance of about two metres, at f/8 everything between about 1.5 and 3.5 metres from the camera should be acceptably sharp. This is the average camera-to-subject distance for most street photography involving people.
Many cameras (and some lenses) make it easy to switch between manual and autofocus. Your local camera shop can show you examples from different cameras.
Framing
Framing aids are common, particularly in the latest entry-level cameras. One of the most useful – and most universally provided – is a grid overlay that can be used to help you keep horizons level. Even smartphone cameras come with this feature.
A grid overlay (shown here in red) made it easier to create a harmonious composition by framing the main subject to fall on one of the grid lines. In order to produce a silhouette effect in this shot, the exposure was metered on the brightly-lit background, using spot metering.
Grid overlays are not recorded in your photos – and they can be used for many things, apart from keeping horizons level. Use the grid to position subjects on or near one of the intersections of the grid lines to create a balanced composition, as shown in the illustration above. With human subjects, viewers respond more positively if the subject is facing into the picture, regardless of the orientation of their body.
The grid can also show how buildings appear tilted when the camera is at an angle to the scene. This can be corrected in cameras with Keyhole compensation or adjusted with Transform or Optical Distortion settings in editing software.
Watch out for ‘photobombing’ when somebody (or something) inserts itself into the image frame – often as you’re triggering the shutter. It can be difficult to avoid these situations when you’re using the viewfinder to frame shots but less so when framing with the LCD screen. Take a couple of extra shots as insurance against such events; it’s better to have a few ‘spares’ than risk missing shots.
Useful links
This article by Margaret Brown is an excerpt from City & Street Photography – click here to order print or ebook edition.
Pocket guide Partner: Camera House
