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In street photography you should be fast to capture the pictures of right moments therefore you should use a fast shutter speed and reletively fast ISO. Actually using low ISO values like 100 is better to have less grain/noise in the picture but in the evening when shadows of buildings cover the street it is hard to take clear shots without a tripod at this point i advice you to switch you ISO value to be able to use faster shutter speeds. In such conditions 400 ISO should be ideal, but if it isn’t use something like 800. But remember increasing ISO will also increase the size of the grain in your film or level of noise if you are using a DSLR. In sum, in the evening and early morning hours it is better to use fast ISO speeds like 400, and to get pictures with less grain use ISO 100 during the day.

As i said to capture the right moments on time, fast shutter speeds are preferred in street photography. For example 1/125 sec. will be enough to freeze the action. But if you want to give the feeling of motion, you can use slower shutter speeds, like i did in “Frozen in Time”. Actually as long as there’s enough light in the environment, using aperture priority mode (Av in Canon cameras) of your camera will be a good choice.

I prefer to use medium aperture between f/4 and f/8 in street photography. These aperture settings both let the photographer be fast in daylight and give enough depth of field range to avoid focus problems. As you know the lower f values such as f/4 , f/2.8 etc. lets more light into the camera therefore increase the speed of shutter. Also as the f number decreases, depth of field range gets narrower which lets you isolate the subject from background.

I don’t know is it true to give exact numbers as if they are rules. Indeed there’s no “right” settings, since they change according to each camera, film, lens, environment. The numbers and i’m writing here are just commonly used approximate numbers for the settings. Don’t forget to try different settings, angles and compositions…

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Exposure is amount of incoming light to the camera during a single shot. If the sensor or film exposed to light too long, the picture will be washed out or over-brightened in other terms. If film or sensor exposed to light to short, then the photograph will be too dark. Modern cameras have light meters that shows you ideal exposure settings by measuring the amount of light in the scene. But sometimes it is better to set the camera manually.

Two main factors that affect the exposure level of the picture are; shutter speed and aperture. Shutter speed, determines how long the sensor or film will be exposed to light and shutter speed is measured in seconds or fractions of a second. 2′ means 2 seconds and 1/60 means one sixtieth of a second which means 16.6 milliseconds. And aperture is the size of the gap in the lens that lets the light into your camera. Aperture is measured in f/stops, as the number with the f increases the gap in the lens gets smaller, and as the number decreases gap gets bigger and lets more light into the camera. f/2.8 is a wide aperture and f/22 is a narrow aperture.

Both of aperture and shutter speed are used to control the amount of light that enters into the camera but with different effects of photograph. As i wrote in my earlier posts, shutter speed is the control that freezes the movement or gives the feeling of speed by making the subject or background blurry. On the other hand aperture controls depth-of-field* determining what is in the focus. A wide aperture like f/2.8, can be used to isolate one object by blurring the objects in front and back also background. A narrow or small aperture like f/20 makes everything sharp in the picture, which is good for landscape and architectural photography.

There’s one factor that affects the exposure, which is ISO, sensitivity of film or sensor to the light. Higher ISO value means higher sensitivity to light, which allows you to take pictures without a tripod when there is not enough light, but as everything, high ISO comes with a cost, which is grain or noise in digital photography. Grain or noise reduces the quality of image by adding small visible particles which is not good for large prints. I advice you to set the ISO to low values if you have enough light. ISO 100 is the lowest ISO in most of D-SLR cameras, and 1600 – 3200 are the highest.

*Depth of Field : is the part of the scene that appears sharp in the picture.

Watch the weather channels and weather forecasting web-sites like Weather.com or Yahoo! Weather to find a good thunder storm. Also choose a location that you can take the best shots.

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You need a tripod, because if you hold your camera in your hand, you’ll shake your camera and the picture will be blurry. You need long exposure times in order to capture the lightning which is incredibly fast. You cannot press the shutter release button when you see the lightning, you have to press the button and wait for lightning, else you’ll miss the shot. Buy a shutter release cable which is quite cheap to use your cameras B (Bulb) feature effectively. Shutter release cable also helps you take the shot without touching your camera which will reduce the risk of shaking the camera (by pressing the button on your camera you can shake it by mistake even when your camera is on a tripod.).

Go to the location that you decided before which is great for shooting the lightning, place your camera on your tripod. Attach shutter release cable to the camera, set your aperture, exposure and ISO, you are ready to go. Capturing the lightning is much more easy when you use BULB function of your camera, set your shutter speed to the Bulb or B, press the shutter release button on the cable until you see a lightning bolt then release the button. that way you’ll capture the lightning. Of course you may have some problems with the exposure level or finding the best settings, but you’ll increase the results as you practice more. Practice, practice, practice…

Note : If you don’t have a shutter release cable, use the timer of your camera with a long shutter time, that way you increase the chance to capture a lightning. If you can’t capture it because of wrong timing try more and you’ll get the results. Also if you don’t have tripod put you camera on a table, wall etc. and make sure it is fixed, safe and stable and use the timer to take the shot.

* Bulb leaves the shutter open as long as you hold the button and closes it as you release the button.

As an example if you are shooting a race using a fast shutter speed, your shot will be clear and sharp, car is not blur, background is not blur, wheels are not blur, road is not blur…. Your picture will look like picture of a stopping car. But it is a race car, your theme is SPEED, so you should make the viewers feel the speed. How? Well with a relatively slow shutter speed and sometimes (as in the example of race car) by following the moving object with your camera. Most of the time, a tripod and a slower shutter speed will be enough to create the feeling of motion in your pictures. When shooting a waterfall use a tripod and take two different pictures from the exact same spot with two different shutter speeds (lets say 1/250 sec. and 1/5 sec. ). You will see the difference, in the first picture that you took with a faster shutter speed, the waterfall looks like it is frozen in time but in the second picture that you used a slower shutter speed you get a picture with silky surface of smoothly flowing water. Some examples

In the picture above ; i followed the movement of the footballer with my camera while i’m taking the picture. As you see pitch, hands and legs of footballer and ball is blurry but head and torso of footballer is not. Pitch is flu because i moved the camera, footballers legs and ball is blur because of their own movement but torso and head of footballer are not flu because i followed the footballer’s movement with almost the same speed.

When taking the picture above; i zoomed in and focused on #9 and suddenly zoomed out while i’m taking the picture. This is why everything is blur but the #9.

And last one; this is an example for using different shutter speeds, i already told about it in the beginning of this writing.

Soccer pictures are also added to my Photography Page -> People and Portrait