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Street Photos tips and tricks | trips and tics I

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A few tips for beginners and others who feel not so confident shooting people: if shooting from the hip while walking in broad day light, hitting the shutter between footsteps, set lens focus to manual and adjust the scale to the precalculated distance between you and your subjects (safer: between 3m and infinity), then shoot in shutter speed mode with a 600 or higher value and let the camera calculate the rest.

Shoot in manual mode, you can play with shutter speeds and aperture and, to begin with, let the ISO in auto so the camera can decide its value for you.

You can also make a reading of your hand in the particular light you'll be shooting at, memorize those values and play around with what the camera sees, adjusting settings as needed.

Do not shoot and check your photo on the screen right away, that will denounce you.

A safe lens for street is a 10-20mm, but get ready to crop, because a non-natural distortion will occur, which invalidates the scene for the Street Genre.

A Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 is one of my favs (motor is noisy, though), I absolutely adore that lens. Never mind the brand and the I'm-ashamed-of-my-lens syndrome, your penis or your tits will always be your penis and your tits regardless of the others' size and shape, it IS a gorgeous lens, optical quality is fantastic. Construction quality is bad (mine is broken and I have duct tape blocking a hole, but then again, I break all my lenses).

The 50mm 1.4 is without a doubt my fav, but it can constrain the subjects on the frame, giving it a non natural look.

Avoid huge negative spaces in a shot or use them to the composition aesthetics, specially if you want to convey a sense of isolation or loneliness (better said than done, I still fuck up with this one). I have parallax and composition issues.

B&W processing - emulating film types

Careful with editing, I have learnt in the most painful way there is a difference between altering significantly a photo and documenting a situation.

Emulating film through channels:

In photoshop, go to image> adjustments> channel mixer.

Set the R, G, and B channels to the following values with the Monochrome box checked to emulate these films:
Agfa 200X 18,41,41
Agfapan 25 25,39,36
Agfapan 100 21,40,39
Agfapan 400 20,41,39
Ilford Delta 100 21,42,37
Ilford Delta 400 22,42,36
Ilford Delta 400 Pro & 3200 31,36,33
Ilford FP4 28,41,31
Ilford HP5 23,37,40
Ilford Pan F 33,36,31
Ilford SFX 36,31,33
Ilford XP2 Super 21,42,37
Kodak Tmax 100 24,37,39
Kodak Tmax 400 27,36,37
Kodak Tri-X 25,35,40


I have tried a few settings with awesome results. Now I can't vouch to the accuracy of film types, as I have close to zero experience with them (I use Ilfords and Superia) and I can guarantee any film user will probably be horrified with some of these, but they are useful to enrich your photographs.

Also, convert to BW and use curves on EACH channel, not RGB!
Personally, I usually desaturate and individually use this method on Canon's DPP.

Silver EFEX Pro 2 is absolutely brilliant.
Color Efex 4 is absolutely brilliant.

Now, for the most important tips:

Avoid clichés and sterile photos. Make sure there is a correlation between the subject and the environment, don't mistake portraits with Street situations.
Make sure the photo says something to the viewers and captures their attention for more than 1 second. Avoid uninteresting shit.

Above all, go back to your photos in a few weeks and delete all that don't mean anything or are just really bad. This is how I make my portfolio. I get rid off the shitty ones from time to time and I'm still going.

Build a portfolio!

I reserve the right to be wrong.
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© 2012 - 2024 fuxs
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splendidofsun's avatar
"Above all, go back to your photos in a few weeks and delete all that don't mean anything or are just really bad" <-- I really love this line (now brb, I would delete... almost all photos I've taken :lmao: and I am still going ;) )