The only street photography settings that matter

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#streetphotography #photography #settings

[@erickchevezr]

Incredibly helpful video Mike!!! Really great tips

[@johnwaine56]

Thanks Mike. A very helpful refresher. We so rarely get sunny days, I forget to go up to 1/1000 when it is that bright. Thanks for the reminder

[@lee13whitehead]

You can use zone focusing on the Fujifilm, switch to Manual focus, Depth of field scale in settings to Film, then set your range and done!

[@Danilyn_Livao]

This is so helpful, Mike!🙌 You've really made the settings easy to understand and apply. Thanks for sharing your expertise! 👍

[@bubbachua]

I agree, 1/1000 gets much sharper in focus photos, 1/500 has been miss and motion blur sometimes for me too

[@dumspyrospero]

Manual focus at the hyper focal distance is the best and fastest focus method for street photography ❤️

[@Fujifilm2021]

I always use F8 and 500 speed and auto iso and 3 chapters of continuous photos. When I shoot, I will stand and do not move. I enjoy street photography.

[@whatsgood001]

Thats a gorgeous camera 🔥🔥🔥

[@peteb5461]

Top words sir... Pretty much set on a 10-P to compliment my Q-P.... Keep up the amazing work!

[@MikeChudley]

Thanks Pete!

[@jezmo9117]

Super helpful discussion of your settings. Thanks.

[@MikeChudley]

Thanks for watching!

[@jstnjeergdss]

this video was great...great timing for me as I get more comfortable with my X-T5

I just had a conversation about high-megapixel cameras and shake with Jeff Ascough. In one of his videos, he suggested setting your camera to lower quality to mitigate motion blur, claiming there is some kind of physics behind high-MP sensors causing shaky images (which is false). The need for a faster shutter speed arises because a higher-resolution image captures more detail, making the blur more obvious when viewed at 1:1. If all things are equal (i.e., printing or posting the image at the same size as the lower-resolution image), you will get the exact same amount of motion blur. By Jeff's logic, you could also argue that using a less sharp lens would reduce shake (which I also wouldn’t recommend).

[@gilberttripet6989]

Thanks Mike! It's a very usefull video for me!

[@david_walsh]

Great stuff!👌

[@chrisjones6439]

Thumbnail behind the scenes is really interesting, thanks for adding mate 👍

[@MikeChudley]

Glad you liked that! Thanks

[@chrisjones6439]

⁠just wanted to add....Focal Point is excellent, really enjoy it 👍

[@PhotoArtBrussels]

Mike, if you use an electronic shutter then you will see more movement due to the readout time of the sensor. Use a mechanical shutter when possible, then time is time.

[@MikeChudley]

I never use electronic shutter

[@chrisjones6439]

Roughly the same settings I use....that's where our similarities end 😂😂

[@MikeChudley]

Hahaha does it? 😂

[@chrisjones6439]

@ bud, I'd give my right nut to take photos like you 😂😂 Great vid as always 👍

[@chrisjones6439]

⁠mate, I would give my right nut to take photos like you 😂😂 Great vid as always 👍

[@chrisjones6439]

⁠mate, I would give my right n"t to take photos like you 😂😂 Great vid as always ❤

[@MikeChudley]

@@chrisjones6439😂😂😂

[@elwick_photo]

You know id never considered the speed of the shutter vs the MP size of the sensor, good to know!

[@kiquette]

You can also zone focusing with the X100: Manuel mode___ for example with f11 take the hyperfocale distance related with the lens and the aperture, here 2,3 m-- put that distance on the scale distance turning the ring-- done

[@danielw.3888]

Thanks a lot for this stuff. Will try out 😊 Which Focus is prefered? AF-S, AF-C or manual? And which Focus Field (like spot etc.)? Thanks in advance 🙏

[@alfiep7930]

I agree with most of what you say.....Thank you..........“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.” - Elliott Erwitt 😎

[@ChrisBrogan]

Loved walking through all these. On my Fujifilm camera, I fiddle with all 3 settings a lot more manually. On my Sony, I will probably implement your set it and forget it plan, because I've been a bit lazy and leaving it in full auto a lot of the time, and then just fixing things in post. I prefer your method more. Thank you!

[@johnvr1]

You need quite a lot of light to shoot at f/8 and 1/1000.

[@istvann.huszar420]

These are certainly not settings for nighttime street photography, but it's not that bad. It may produce higher ISOs, but on modern cameras it's absolutely fine. Many will downsample their images for social media, use intelligent denoising, or convert the photos to grayscale to make the noise visually imperceivable.

[@johndoherty1336]

Thanks for sharing

[@MikeChudley]

Thanks for watching!

[@felixking9151]

“Boom, we have removed the distraction” sounded fairly sinister

[@stigottesencreations]

Great video and thanks for sharing . I fully understand, and use myself the exact same settings on my M10R - as to f. Stop, shutter speed and ISo. Question is: when you are on the 35mm, what would then be the “comfortable” focus distance, as opposed to 3 meters. On the 28 ?

[@michaelwplant]

I have also found that with the Leica M11 that I also want to work with higher shutter speeds than on the Leica M10 or even my Nikon Z8. I have also found that getting the sharpening setting to be important with the files as well.

[@eastbaystreet1242]

Yes, and I tend to have the Nikons (Z9, D3/3x/800/700) set internally down a stop because they tend to overexpose (everything) vs my Q2 set on Highlight Protection metering (most of the time). Please see my other comment regarding some slight impediments I face, including not having taken the lens cover off before raising the camera (confounds my metering, but my composition is about the same); not having turned the camera on before raising it (I have about the same hit rate in action situations camera on/camera off); and almost always forgetting to reset ExpComp at the end of a session/before starting another session. Let's just say it's a good thing I don't depend upon photography to feed myself!

[@MrNeilc76]

Isn’t setting a shutter speed and an aperture manual mode rather than aperture priority?

[@andywatson5716]

Yes it is

[@whitehorseflyer]

He did caveat with "sort of", but yes, it's manual mode

[@charliejg]

And, it's quite possible that you have put in hours upon hours of practice to get to the point where you don't have to think about everything you just said in the video when you're shooting! I think that it's easy to forget that piece of the puzzle when we watch videos and see great shots being made by you guys. Question: When you're using zone focusing, do you also have peaking enabled to assist? Or, would that just take to much time and cause missed opportunities? Thanks for the info. Have a rockin' day!

[@stuartdorman7125]

Learn the intensity of the light where you live. The Sunny 16 rule always perplexed me with underexposed negatives growing up in the UK, because it was more like Sunny 11 or even Sunny 8. But taking holidays in Spain and Mexico it all came together. Gotta wear shades! Depth of field markings on lenses created for film photography don't necessarily yield the expected results when used on digital bodies, in great part due to the nature of grain in film giving more latitude. The higher the megapixel count, the more critical focus needs to be. Compared with shooting Portra 400 or HP5 on a film M body, I'll usually change my expectations of what depth of field is considered sharp when zone focusing by 1.5 - 2 stops (eg f/8 -> f/4.8 or even f/4) on a 40+ mp digital M body. Monochrome sensors don't seem to suffer from this as much as colour sensors though

[@DimiArhontidis]

I find my iso is not working right when set on auto while I’m also shooting manual aperture and shutter speed.

[@gerryphilpott9766]

Very helpful for quick and easy don't think too much about it settings. Sometimes get too caught up in perfect set up and not spending enough time on just being there and grabbing moments. Also, who makes that camera strap that you use with the M11-P? Looks very subtle and wide enough to be comfortable with my M11 but not bulky. Thanks!

[@dingbat19]

Very interesting comments about shutter speed and MP of sensor - not many people make this point but I agree it is a valid one - the higher MP the sensor the more that blur and OOF elements will be visible, however we have to remember that this will be mainly when viewing at pixel level. So while you are correct that in some circs you can get away with 1/500s on a 24 or 27mp sensor but may need 1/1000 on a 40-60MP sensor, when viewed at normal distance such as whole image on screen, I'm not sure you will notice - we can over-obsess about 100-200% pixel level viewing

[@RegrinderAlert]

When viewing the images at the same side, the higher MP will have zero disadvantage regarding blur. If anything there is still a tiny advantage to the higher MP.

[@Memory_Gatherers]

Use MF mostly nowadays it’s great even for video I find though tricky if moving about a lot!

[@lucianoadami7231]

Condivido tutto 👍

[@SnapJimmy]

What if I get terrible grain at that setting with my camera and I want clean grainless photos?

[@johnwaine56]

Topaz is your best friend but Adobe NR is vastly improved now

[@errole]

Are you a manual lens shooter

[@DaleHughesPhotography]

Command or ctrl J instead of copy and paste 😊

[@Keenonhang]

Hay Mike. What autofocus setting would you use for shooting from the hip type shots on a Leica Q3? Would you use manual focal for that and set the distance? Thanks. Ray (love your videos by the way. I find them informative, relaxing and enjoyable to watch)

[@MikeChudley]

Yeah manual and set a distance could work if you have enough light and f8 or f11 is useable. But auto focus with the point in the centre could work as well. Hope this helps.

[@Keenonhang]

@ Thanks Mike. Appreciate it

[@veryjr2966]

Hi Mike - question on AUTO ISO @1/1000 SS- does this setting override the min SS you’d normally dial in with Auto IS in Leica user profiles (assuming this min SS being lower) Hope this makes sense. Thx

[@MikeChudley]

Yeah so I set it to 1/1000 if possible. If I need to lower the shutter speed, I set it to auto so it’s full aperture priority mode. Then it’s min is 1/500. If I need to go lower than that because it’s dark for whatever reason, I’ll manually set the ss again to whatever it needs to be like 1/125 or 1/250 or something else.

[@KeAiFu]

If you use a cam with an excellent AF, you can work with aperture 1.4-2.8 Ok with a Fuji this is difficult.

[@kulassbp]

Do you set max limit of your ISO when in auto?

[@MikeChudley]

6400

[@artivism4068]

try f/8, Shutter speed: 400th, ISO: 100 in bright unobstructed daylight

[@RegrinderAlert]

Three fixed settings almost never work. Certainly not across different regions.

[@JulioBomfim]

This settings is almost shoot in full auto mode or with a smartphone. Real photography is much more than freeze motion and deep depth of field.

[@jixxxxer17]

shoot 1,000 images and hope for 1 to be amazing !

[@peterdegerman2434]

Impossible in Scandinavia, there is not enough light

[@istvann.huszar420]

Thanks for sharing your tricks. Three technical comments. 1) When you start by setting your shutter speed to 1/1000s, it's NOT called aperture priority. A lot of KZbinrs casually say "I use aperture priority", which is simply not true. I bet you'll ruin more than half of your photos if you use actual aperture priority for street photography. 2) ISO is pronounced eye-so, not I-S-O. 3) You don't have to use a rangefinder camera to do zone focusing. Those are completely unrelated.

[@PhotosByMotaz]

He probably meant manual. Also most people using Leicas and Fujis just use the dials so not used to PASM dial modes.

[@whitehorseflyer]

Exactly what I thought, how can you set a shutter speed and be in AP? Impossible. But he did say "sort of".

[@docmiguel]

With your ideas of (street) photography you should use an iPhone in 4k video mode at 60 fps …

[@stummj99]

1/1000 is 1/1000. I wonder how camera manufacturers calibrate their shutters and whether they degrade over time.

[@RikMaxSpeed]

I can’t believe you would hack the London skyline using AI-generated mush. For a genuine street photographer that is an absolutely appalling idea.

[@_ped_]

Don't see anything wrong with it. It's a KZbin thumbnail mate. It's ok.

[@awpqq]

It’s quite strange listening to your ideas on focus and exposure. When I started about 60 years ago everything was manual focus - and you had to continually measure the light with a hand held exposure meter. ISO - (ASA then) was usually 125 (FP4) or 400 (Tri-x). Now you want to throw away 40+ years of technology and go backwards to manual focus. I don’t see the point in limiting ISO to 3200 or 6400 - what do you do when that limit is reached - go home or get blurry pics? Auto ISO will always choose the lowest possible ISO considering your other settings - so why not just set it to the cameras maximum and forget it. If it bothers you you can always sort digital noise in post - much harder to sort blurry pics.

[@zettepix2009]

For street photography I also use manual focus. I have missed shots because of autofocus. Even when I use the x100vi. My muscle memory gets the focusing right and I get very neat shoots and become invisible by shooting from the hip. I would not do that in a model photoshoot in a studio, of course.

[@milliesavard]

Hope you take off that bloody lens cap too 😂. For rangefinder users, lens caps are useless. Get a filter to protect.

[@RegrinderAlert]

They are a great mental exercise because if you leave it on your frames will be black without you noticing 😂

[@andywatson5716]

ISO is not your exposure

[@johnwaine56]

An oversight on Mike’s part. For those who don’t know ISO is a measure of the cameras sensitivity to the light hitting the sensor. But for creative purposes it can be thought of as an equal element of the exposure triangle along with aperture and shutter speed.

[@andreafischetti7972]

Thank’s….

[@brianhinesley]

i think because my style of street is less layering subjects and more getting interesting portraits, with a good depth of field i tend to stick around at f2 and occasionally venture to 5.6 if i want that group shot. I understand you're thinking though and why you shoot how you do. Shooting 18 years now, i use to be MR f16 when i was first learning sunny 16 and eventually found my style/taste.

[@SourPlanet]

Higher megapixel sensors require higher shutter speed at times because of the literal pixel space available to convey blur. Like imagine a ball being thrown perpendicular to the sensor. Let's say the shutter is fast enough to capture the ball flying by in the frame, and the ball only has a chance to move over 3% of the entire frame. If you're on a 24mpx sensor M240... the ball is captured within a 180 pixel spread. On your M11P? The ball passes through 285 pixels. I swapped from the A7c to the A7Rii, and my shutter speeds had to go up for street shooting, absolutely. I swapped to the M240 from the A7Rii, and my shutter speeds came back down. I saw the effect directly in the photos and, at first, I was baffled lol.

That being said, if you downsample the higher MP image in post to match a lower res sensor, the motion blur will be the same...

[@SourPlanet]

Yeah, within reason. Tends to help the ISO noise exacerbation too.

@@SourPlanet Exactly the same. The ball has travelled the same distance.

[@SourPlanet]

Correct. The same distance, captured through a different resolution. The ball is not the determining factor here. Want proof? Change the shutter speed to be slower and the ball becomes a blur instead of crisp. It went the same distance yet the result is entirely different. In your own comment to the OP, you assert additional detail as the reason why the motion is easier to observe. That doesn't actually explain anything. Pixel interpolation is the gradual reduction of detail as images lose pixel count during deresolution. We're talking about the opposite effect.

​@@SourPlanet I'm not sure what you're getting at. The confusion that Mike and Jeff Ascough have is that they believe higher megapixel cameras CREATE more motion blur. I'm simply saying that motion blur is more noticeable when viewed at higher magnifications. Jeff literally thinks that you should lower the resolution of your camera to get a sharper image. He also doesn't believe that if you reduce the image size in post to match the lower-resolution image, they will have the exact same amount of motion blur and in fact, the downsampled image will be sharper. That's what Mike and Jeff are talking about in their ongoing debate about high-resolution cameras and motion blur, and it's specifically what I'm addressing.

[@BrianRakowski-c7x]

Off topic but I thought of something that you could present to your viewers and have weekly or monthly photography challenges of all levels. Just a thought Might help with more subscribers and viewers.

[@lensofthenorth42]

There's literally nothing about manual focus that's a much nicer experience except maybe if you're shooting macro. In your case f8 means everything is in focus so you're not really focusing which is why it's easy for you. Soon as you have to focus on something for real you'll find out why AF is far nicer.

[@mp_martin]

You should really avoid technical explanations. 90% of the time you’re ambiguous, if not confused.

[@bamsemh1]

The only most important thing about street photography, is avoid the portraits. Ignore people, and show us your surroundings and future spots to visit. Humans can be seen just outside and with our phones. Nobody cares about destructive humans.