Hi ! Here in Paris, France, conditions have just been ideal for streetshooting. Some days, I go even out twice, one in Paris, one in my hometown, Meudon. So this morning, while commuting back home, I thought about writing a post on the settings I use for the exposition settings with my Fuji X-T2…
Light evaluation
First, light measurements. A long time ago, I wanted to control everything. So I went only with manual mode. But in the streets, it’s not ideal. I missed a lot. I tried a semi-automatic mode, as I’ll describe later, so I still miss shots. But I’m a lot more in the shooting process than in the technical fiddling now. So be it…
Shooting in semi-automatic, I use the light measurement provided by the camera. I set the metering dial on center-weighted.
Exposition
Now let’s talk about ISO – aperture – speed.
I always use a fixed ISO value : 1600 ISO. Why that ? For two reasons actually. The first on I owe to Jay Maisel. I do not know him personally, but I wish I would… Anyway, he filmed very interesting photostreet sessions with Scott Kelby. You can find them on www.kelbyone.com. In one of the videos, he said he used always a high ISO value, in order to be able to choose a reasonable aperture and still shoot faster than 1/250s. This ensures sharp images with slowly moving subjects. This is a great tip. Thanks Jay ! And the second reason why I chose ISO 1600, is because of Fuji. I love the delicate grainy look of the Fuji jpegs when shot with ISO 1600…
Let’s speak about the aperture. It depends… Usually, I choose f8. But if I shoot a subject with a small depth of field, I go for as low as I can on my lens. On the streets, I usually take the Fuji 55-200mm zoom. This gives an aperture at around 4.
This leaves us with one last parameter to set ; the speed. This is where I rely on the automatic speed mode…
So when I go out, I preset my X-T2 with ISO 1600, f8, auto-speed.
Shutter type : mechanical or electronical ?
There is another important setting : the shutter type. Because in full sun, with f4 and even f8, the light meter suggests speeds that may exceed the 1/8000s limit. This is why I use the ES electronic shutter.
So this is it !
One last note on this topic : I use the same settings when I shoot streetphotography with the Fuji X100F.
So guys, thank you for your visit ! Stay tuned…