Use These STREET PHOTOGRAPHY SETTINGS (Fujifilm XT4 2021 Update)

about a year ago i made a very similar video however just like you my skills my style how i like to shoot develop over time so today i'm giving you an update as to how i set up my camera for street photography what settings i use what buttons i use in the hopes that it will teach you something new and if you have your own system already in place you might find a new hack or a new trick or something new to implement into your own workflow going forwards of course this video is heavily biased towards the fujifilm xt4 however in my experience i found that 90 of everything i'm gonna discuss with regards to button assignments things like that will carry over to other fuji cameras however the main principle of this video which is the settings for street photography they carry over to regardless of what camera you use so even if you're on an icon or sony or whatever do still watch because you might learn something new one very important thing to remember though is the settings and the methods i'm going to talk about not some gold standard it's just what works for me and what i've developed over time everyone has their own way of taking photos fundamentally there's no right or wrong way when it comes to photo settings you just have to experiment and see what you like and what gives you the results that you want oh and lastly these are settings for mainly daylight photography maybe a bit of blue hour but certainly not night time photography when it comes to night time i would rather be in the pub at home watching a movie or asleep not taking photos a very very quick break just to let you know that this video is sponsored by myself my new zen edition 2 has just been released if you do want to grab a copy and support me links in the description i'm not going to plug it any more than that thank you if you do check it out and back to the video [Music] let's start with the basics which is shutter speed iso aperture and exposure compensation now before going any further if you press and hold this front dial and hold it for like two seconds you will get into the shortcut menu for adjusting where all of these buttons are so if i'm going through the manuals do a different thing at least on the fuji cameras this is a quick way to get to it so aperture is always on the front dial it's just the easiest place to get it's the most common sense place for it to remain especially if i'm holding the camera like this in terms of the exposure compensation obviously the compensation dial here is very useful i do sometimes put it into c which is custom and then that reprograms the exposure compensation to the front dial so the front dial is if i obviously turn it like that it's exposure compensation then if i push it in once it then becomes my shutter speed and then i will use that to adjust the shutter speed the rear dial is the iso and finally the the actual dials at the top i generally use them if it's very cold and i've got thick gloves on or if i want to really slow down my photography or if i can't use the screen or the viewfinder for whatever reason i want to remain extra discreet then these come very very handy moving on to the drive settings which is little bit just down there i have it set to continuous low which is effectively burst mode but a slow burst mode of around 8 frames a second this allows me to take a single photo if i want or if i keep holding the shutter it will take a burst the reason i use that is because sometimes if things are happening i would rather have 10 photos where i can later pick the best one rather than just go for one image and hope it have everything sort of like lines up and then get the right moment as for the shutter button i have made a few changes so i do combine traditional focusing with the shutter as well as back button focus but then i will explain this in more detail later in the video finally let's have a quick look at the custom buttons now this is quite specific to the xd4 the xt3 will be very similar as well um so yeah if you have another camera you might want to skip this bit but do watch it actually because at least the reasoning for why i've set it up like this can carry over to whatever camera that you use so anyway on the xd4 or the xd3 i think xh1 as well but anyway you can press and hold the display back button and that will get you into the shortcut for the custom button so you can set them up quickly and see what's already assigned to let's start first with the top one there's a function button right at the top next to the shutter button and i have that set to electronic shutter which is effectively a quiet silent shutter the reason this is because it's very intuitive being next to the shutter but also every time i wanted a silent shutter i wanted it very quickly so by having instant access meant i could get it into the quieter setting very quickly moving down we have af on which is effectively back button focus and that is set to default which is to focus but we'll talk about that later as for the rear dial if you push that in i've got that still on the default which is a digital punch and zoom when you're in manual focus to help you focusing but again we'll talk about that later q menu now this is this q menu is quite specific to the xd4 but basically i've got the self timer i've got the autofocus custom settings which i just leave a default and never ever change them because the default ones are fine and then i've got screen brightness and the film simulations the film simulations even though i shoot everything in the raw it is a nice way to kind of put a little filter over the screen just to give you an idea of what the end result will be like so if i'm shooting in black and white for black and white i can then put a film simulation over it and even though the raw file will retain all of its color at least i can compose in black and white which will help me anyway moving down to ael um this i've reprogrammed to my focus type so single point zone or all and the reason it's there is because it's the closest one to the joystick so it just makes sense finally the top d-pad button is the face detect on and off now this is more for a video portrait but for some street scenarios like street portraits this can be very useful to quickly acquire focus on the person's face oh and one more is this side button the left one i've got that set to photometry settings so if you are in aperture priority or shutter priority you can obviously tell the camera how to sort of expose if you like but i do have that set to multi most of the time but again i'll explain that later in terms of all of the other buttons and things they're all set either to off so i don't press them by accident or they are video specific features because obviously it's a hybrid camera and generally speaking that is all of these settings specifically for street photography and just general photography in total i have three different focusing methods and whichever one i use depends on the conditions subjects and things like that so the first one is what i would use for 90 of the time it's my go-to street photography setting and it goes as follows so first of all the focus type is set to afc which is continuous autofocus what that means is that if i acquire focus on the subject if i move or the subject moves the camera will try and track and adjust for the change in distance so in the street environment if you've seen any of my pov videos i walk around a lot i very rarely stop you know compose and things like that i'm not saying it's good or bad it's just my approach so having it in afc allows me to remove that hot sort of error if you like if i focus and then i move or the subject moves in terms of the actual shutter button i still have the focusing assigned and the auto exposure assigned to the half press of the shutter so the reason for that is because sometimes i'll keep my camera a bit lower down which means i can hold the camera like this and just focus with my thumb without having to reach around the back of the camera it just makes life a lot easier and also for street photography i don't really take my time a huge amount so having it there just saves a bit of time finally in terms of the actual focusing method on the camera i use the feature called zone focus which effectively gives you a small box or let's say quite a large box with very small boxes in it and what it does is whatever that box is the camera will try and find something to focus inside so if you like it's half manual not manual traditionally like you still tell the camera focus here but within that area it's up to you where you focus typically i will leave that in the middle and then i can just move my camera and recompose or compose as needed now this is definitely not the most accurate way to focus and the hit rate definitely drops i would say probably 90 percent maybe a bit less of my photos are in focus with regards to what i want it to be in focus but what i have found is that 90 is good enough considering how quickly and effortlessly it is for me to focus i don't even think about it so the extra drop in let's say reliability is more than made up for by the fact that i don't have to actively think about focusing and let the camera do it the second method utilizes a back button focus and this method i typically use for a slower scene so let's say for example i want to take a cityscape let's say for example i want to take a photo of like things which are still and generally a very slower pace of photography for this i will put the camera into afs which is the sing um single autofocus by that i mean that if you acquire focus the camera will not try to then adjust for that focus so once you've acquired it that's it okay and for this i do use back button focus so i have disconnected the shutter button from focusing now the shutter button still does the auto exposure but what i have found in my experience is every time i use this focus method 99.9 of the time i'm in manual focus anyway because i just generally take more time so to me that is not really that important so in terms of what's um on the screen i have the small square so the single point autofocus and that is obviously a lot more accurate than the zone and as i've said i would use this for things like cityscapes still life you know if i'm walking down a harbor and i see a boat i will use this method um typically i won't use it for street photography people busy scenes for just quieter locations and yet in my experience it's definitely a lot more accurate than the previous method and the reason i use the back button focus is because what i can do is let's say i'm walking through a port and there's a nice boat in the distance i can focus on that boat with the back button i can then let go and i will know that as long as i don't move around too much in terms of forwards and backwards that boat will remain in good focus then i can worry about composing and taking photos without worrying about the camera refocusing another example is let's say i'm walking i want to focus on the background so let's say it's the shard in the background and i want to get people walking through which are out of focus now if i use the previous method the camera will always try and refocus on whatever it thinks should be in focus whereas this way i will focus on the shut and then let go of the focusing and just keep taking photos until i get the right type of people going through the shot and get the composition that i want without worrying about the camera trying to always acquire focus the last method is definitely my least used one and i can probably count on one hand how often i've done it and that's traditional manual focusing typically this is reserved for things which are in heavy heavy fog and the autofocus is struggling as well as things which are like hundreds of miles away like a mountain that's million miles away and um a bit hazy then obviously the autofocus might not be the best in that condition so manual focus comes in very useful obviously this is a very very slow process i will not use it for street photography and i will use it in just these let's say not extreme scenarios but scenarios where the autofocus would typically struggle and to do that i use the punch in zoom on on on here the rear dial to digitally zoom in i won't adjust the focus until it looks good to my eye and that's it and take a photo now let's move on to exposure so first of all i want to start with manual exposure and the reason for that is in my opinion once you understand how to manually expose the camera when you later start using the auto exposure settings such as aperture priority you will actually be able to utilize those modes much better because you will understand what the camera is trying to do and why so before going into my whys let me first tell you how i set up the camera in terms of just the settings and then as i've said we will go into why i set it up in such a way let's start with iso and my go-to setting for a typical city walk is 500. when i say typical city walk what i mean by that is that the light can always change so you can walk from a bright sunny spot into some shade into a building into a market or into like by the river where there's light reflecting off the water and everything is really bright so if the lights changing i always start with iso 500 in terms of a constant light then i will obviously reduce the iso and keep it lower depending on what's needed so if i'm in the park or if it's a very gray day and generally the light is not changing then i will keep the iso as low as needed in terms of the highest iso setting i typically only go up to 6400 i find 6400 at least on the fujifilm cameras is about the maximum where i am happy with the noise any anything above that is too noisy but generally in my experience i found that i never go above 3200 but then i don't really shoot at night either as for aperture i typically have it between f2 and f8 f4 is my constant starting point and then i will adjust if needed later sometimes i will stretch up to f11 maybe a little bit higher but that's very very rare and typically only when i want as much in focus as possible but more often than not it's because there's so much light that i want to try and block some of it out when it comes to setting the shutter speed typically i will just set it depending on what's needed to achieve the correct exposure so what i mean by that is the iso is set to 500 aperture is set to f4 and then the shutter speed had just whatever it has to be for good exposure not correct exposure so to speak now in terms of my limits for shutter speed i typically don't go below 1 over 250 and once i get to around 1 over 4 000 i will find another way to control the light coming in to bring that shutter speed down and the reason for that is because i want to have headroom on either side now if it's a real like emergency i will drop down to one over 200 for shutter speed but any lower than that i would just rather raise the iso because in my opinion i would rather have a slightly noisy image then an image with a little bit of motion blur now in terms of target exposure everyone has their own way of working and also with me depending on the end result i will expose slightly differently so for example if it's a bright sunny day and i want to get an even exposure so that everything looks good i will underexpose by 0.3 or sometimes 0.6 on the other hand if i want to get the highlights perfectly exposed and then the shadows to fall to black especially at like midday the narcan under exposed by like minus two sometimes now on the other hand if it's like a gray rainy day i'll keep the exposure around zero um and if it's a snowy day sometimes i'll even overexpose by 0.3 because the camera sometimes naturally underexposes snow because obviously snow is meant to be wide but the camera doesn't know that so generally speaking that's where i have it and then in terms of like sunrise sunset blue hour i'll keep it around zero as well and then just adjust it as needed obviously if i'm pointing the camera into the sun i will have to underexpose if i'm pointing it let's say into the shade then i'll have to overexpose so i do play around but around zero is about right now let's talk about why specifically why do i shoot in manual and why do i use these particular settings so manual i will typically use if i want to just focus on my photography i am not making videos i am just zoned out taking photos and also if i want to work on my craft and just get better it helps me just really sort of focus on what i'm doing and it's yeah to me it's just the most enjoyable way of taking photos funny enough when i look through all my previous photos most of my favorite and best and most popular photos have all been taken in manual now as for settings let's quickly start with aperture because it's the easiest to explain so f2 i will typically use that if i want the softest possible image or if i want a bit of the foreground or the background to be out of focus f8 on the other hand i will use that if i want to ensure that more of the image is in focus and if i want to have the sharpest possible result because obviously the lens does work better at around f8 f11 as i've said i will only go up to that if i want to just block out more light in terms of which one i use and when typically if there's like very very nice light and i know i want it soft i will go to f2 um but generally speaking i don't have a particular rule for what to use when um i will just see how i feel and go from there which is why i have the lens in f4 for most of the time because it's a happy medium and going through like a typical day not very often i will deviate from f4 um maybe f2 sometimes but generally i will stick around the middle of that range in terms of the shutter speed um i didn't mention this earlier actually but i want to keep it as close to 1 over 500 as possible with obviously one over 250 being my minimum now the main reason for it is because one over 500 almost guarantees that everything within reason will be motion free and especially if you've seen my style of like photography it's very erratic i just walk around sometimes don't even stop to take a photo so to me having this higher shutter speed just means that any likelihood of something having a bit of motion blur or whatever is just reduced now i would always rather increase the iso than drop the shutter speed but that's we'll talk about that in a minute and as i've said i typically don't go above one over four thousand and because i always want to have a bit of safety room if i need it and i know some people would say well just reduce the shutter speed and stay still and that's all well and good if i'm doing a cityscape if i'm standing still i would reduce the shutter speed which means i can also reduce the iso and before a walking city walking for street photography environment i would always rather have a higher shutter speed and finally the iso to put simply the reason i keep iso 500 is to allow for the higher shutter speed so even if i go into a darker area and i need to reduce the shutter speed or open up the aperture i will still maintain a high enough shutter speed to make sure that whatever take a photo of is as motion free as possible now to summarize everything if you're still a bit unsure confused the whole point of this system of this workflow is that whatever the lighting condition is within reason i have plus or minus one stop of adjustment of exposure adjustment either on the aperture on the shutter speed and on the iso while still maintaining the right settings for that environment so if i walk quickly run into a darker area i can quickly drop the shutter speed and i will still have the right exposure and still maintain a good enough shutter speed in the same way i can quickly open up the aperture or i can quickly drop or increase the iso the whole point of this is that i can pick any of the three adjustments either way to get the correct exposure if something changes very very quickly and that's the point of it it has it's all about being quick and being able to adjust to the lighting conditions very quickly now obviously this doesn't substitute being proactive as in if you know you're going to spend the next 30 minutes in a market that's you know dark then adjust for that before you go in this is mainly for a very rapidly changing scene like a typical city walk now i know that some of you might be sitting at home wondering hold on a minute we've always been told to keep iso as low as possible now you're telling us to keep it higher than needed why is that so i will get into that in a separate video okay but for the purpose of this video i just want you to understand that you will not tell the difference between iso 160 iso 320 500 or even a thousand to that degree unless you're like under exposing your photos by 10 stops and trying to bring it up later or unless you're zooming into a thousand percent you will not tell any real difference on a modern camera but as i've said i'll save this for a separate video because i think it's a can of worms in itself now let's move on to auto exposure so typically all these auto exposure what i mean by that sorry is aperture priority okay when you tell the camera i want it on f4 and the camera does your iso and your shutter speed for you and obviously adjust the exposure depending where you point the camera so typically i would use this if photography is not my only priority when i'm out so let's say i'm filming one of my pov videos i will always have it on aperture priority because obviously my attention is divided between photos and video in the same way if i'm out of friends and family on holiday i don't want to be the one that like always messing around with settings trying to take my time and get the right image i'll just leave it on auto and then if i get good photo i get a good photo so any time where i want to just hand off some of the responsibility to the camera but even so right if you're let's say in a really busy market and there's loads of things going on and you're trying to just get a good shot then this mode will probably be better than manual as well because you literally all your like attention is going on to getting in the right moment rather than what setting to be in so it does have its benefits um even if you're like 100 focused on photography now although there are different types of auto exposure so for example you can have aperture priority shutter priority things like that i will typically leave it in aperture priority because aperture in my opinion is what has the biggest impact in terms of like how your image looks so if you want things you know in focus or out of focus with regards to background to foreground relationship so i will leave it there also because on this camera aperture is there out of all other adjustments it's the quickest one that i can adjust so if for example i go into a really bright scene and i can see that the camera is struggling to control the light that's coming in i can very quickly just close this and help the camera out and this goes back to my point earlier when i said that actually being like being proficient in manual exposure will help you with auto exposure this is what i mean so yeah aperture priority is the one i pick before going any further we do need to tell the camera within what parameters to work when it comes to setting your iso and shutter speed now to do that you go into the settings and when you're in the settings you go to the camera shooting settings and then you go all the way down to a setting called iso auto setting if you're using a different brand of camera you'll you must have this just it might be called differently you then go into auto one and i've got it set default uh sensitivity is 160. so basically the camera will always try to keep the iso as low as possible the max sensitivity 6400 which is obviously how far the camera will go and then the minimum shutter speed is one over 250 as i've said that's my lowest shutter speed now you can adjust auto 2 and auto 3 for different settings so for example auto 2 you can have a lower shutter speed and you might use that at night but typically i don't so i just have auto one set so basically what this means is whenever you're taking photos you've the camera will adjust within your constraints so you will always have a shutter speed of 250 or above and then it will always prioritize increasing the iso to 6400 versus reducing that shutter speed now let's talk about photometry settings and as we've discussed before we've assigned it to this button here so there are four in total right you've got multi center weighted spot and average i'll be honest with you multi is the one that i use probably a hundred percent of the time because multi it literally takes the entire scene and it sets the exposure based on the whole scene you can then use the exposure compensation to adjust it if you want but generally speaking if i'm an auto that is what i would use if i want to use any of the other ones like center weighted or spot i would rather just be manual because it it gives me more control but multi overall i found to be the most accurate for me and generally that is pretty much everything when it comes to my street photography settings if you have any questions comments please write them down below if there's something that you think i've missed out please also write it down i'll try and get back to you um and generally that that is all if the light behind me has been going in and out is because the sun's been going in and out and i've been putting filming this for long enough now so that's it it has been a bit long-winded so if you're still here i do thank you um and yeah thank you very much have a fantastic day if you like the video give it a like if you're not subscribed please look into the subscribing for more photography related content in the future and yeah have a great day and see you soon [Music] bye you

Channel: Roman Fox

Views: 146,656

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Id: 3NznE_zoT9s

Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021