Introduction

Manual mode photography is great for shooting on the streets. I use it all the time as I love to have complete control over my settings when I'm out shooting. But how do you actually use manual mode when you are shooting on the streets?

Let's get into it.

What is Manual Mode?

The M mode on your camera will give you complete control of all of your settings. In Manual Mode, the manual settings give you complete control of the ISO, the shutter speed, and the aperture.

The brilliance of Manual Mode is that you get to have complete creative control over the look of your images.

It also is the best way of learning how to use the exposure settings and to learn about exposure. The more you play about with each setting and how they interact with each other, the better you will become at knowing how exposure works and what the technical aspects of each setting does.

How does Manual Mode work?

For an in-depth discussion on how each technical element, please refer to my blog post on the exposure triangle.

However, for the purposes of this article let's look at how to shoot in manual mode using each element in turn and how they work with street photography.

ISO

ISO is the sensitivity of your camera’s digital sensor. The brightness increases the more you increase your ISO. However, if you keep the ISO at the base level you will need to add more light using one of the other two elements of the exposure triangle.

Whether you are shooting at night or in the day, you will need to adjust your ISO accordingly with the weather conditions. If it is bright and sunny then ISO 100 will suffice. if you are shooting at night then anything in the ballpark of 1600 to 6400 should work, depending upon the scene that you are presented with. If it is a dismal cloudy day, then choose ISO 200 to 400, approximately.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the amount of time your camera’s sensor is exposed to light. The longer the shutter is open the more light hits the sensor which will result in blurred action. Conversely, with a fast shutter speed, the shutter is open for practically milliseconds, resulting in fast action being frozen.

Most of the time, you want to be able to capture your subject in sharp detail, which would mean you would use a shutter speed of at least 1/250 sec - 1/500 sec. However, at night that fast shutter speed could be too dark for street photography. This is why you might want to be using slightly slower shutter speeds of approximately 1/100 sec - 1/200 sec depending upon the light conditions and what your subject is doing.

Aperture

Aperture denotes the amount of light that is coming in through the diaphragm of your lens. Obviously, the wider the diaphragm’s opening the more light is coming through the lens and hitting the sensor. Therefore, the aperture is wide. Conversely, the aperture is narrow when the diaphragm is closed down.

Wide apertures result in a blurred background, which is great for portraiture and street portraits. On the other hand, a narrow aperture gives you much more depth of field, which is perfect for landscape photography and can be good for urban landscape photography.

For daytime street photography, an aperture from f /5.6 - f /16 can be useful, depending upon the weather situations and your location. For night street photography you might need to shoot at a very wide aperture is in order to let enough light in through your lens - f/1.4 - f /8, depending upon the conditions,

How to use Manual Mode for Street Photography

Daytime Street Photography

On a bright sunny day, you will want to choose ISO 800. This is because you never know how the weather will turnout and also, you might be entering some streets with high buildings that block out the sun. You are then going to need to pick an aperture. Let's start with f /8. Then you will pick the shutter speed, something that you know will be fast enough for all street photography eventualities, such as 1/400 sec.

Obviously, this is just a possibility of the scenario that you might face. You might need to adjust the aperture one way or the other, and even the ISO, to get the right exposure using Manual Mode. If the weather turns cloudy then you will probably want to increase your ISO and adjust your aperture accordingly.

For street photography the most important aspect is your shutter speed, therefore the ISO and aperture should be adjusted to work around your shutter speed.

Night Street Photography

Night time street photography is where Manual Mode really comes into its own as you're going to need to adjust settings depending upon how bright the street lights and the shop lights are which you can generally see on the camera’s LCD screen or the viewfinder. If you're using your histogram and notice that the highlights are clipped then you are going to need to bring down the exposure by narrowing the aperture or reducing your ISO, potentially underexposing, and increasing the shadows in post-processing.

At night, fast shutter speeds just aren't going to cut it. Therefore, you're going to need to brighten things up by choosing a fastish shutter speed that is going to let more light in. 1/125 sec is a great starting point as you can certainly freeze subjects at this shutter speed, however, play around and see what works for you.. As I've said before, what shutter speed you use at night depends on how bright the street is; what street lights are on, what shop lights are on. Obviously, a faster shutter speed is better overall, so be deliberate in your choosing.

You will also need to be using wide apertures depending upon how bright or dark the streets are f /1.4. to 5.6 is a good range for shooting in mostly dark areas.

Finally, your ISO needs to be sufficiently high. I always make sure that's when I'm hand-holding the camera I'm shooting at an ISO range from at least 1600 to 6400.

Urban Landscapes on a Tripod

When you are shooting with your camera on a tripod you have a lot of leeway regarding the settings that you choose, especially at night. You can keep your ISO at the base level and shoot with slow shutter speeds (resulting in a long exposure), whilst keeping your aperture narrow enough that you get enough depth of field when shooting streets or buildings.

This is all because you do not have to worry about camera shake, as your camera is on the tripod. Therefore you can use very slow shutter speeds and let enough light in, taking your time with your compositions and your shots.

Street Portraits

Street portrait photography’s settings work as a combination of adjusting the shutter speed and aperture and also keeping in mind what your ISO is. Generally, with any portraiture work, you want the background to be blurred which would require a wide aperture of f/ 5.6 - f /1.2. However, you also want a fast enough shutter speed so that your subject is not blurred - at least 1/100 sec. To finish this equation off you need to make sure that your ISO is high enough for the weather and light conditions that you are in.

Check your Histogram

Knowing that your exposure is correct takes time to learn. Luckily, the histogram generally gives you a very good idea of whether your exposure is correct. The left side of the histogram represents your blacks and shadows. The middle represents your mid tones and the right side represents your highlights and your whites.

If the histogram is bunched up towards the left, this generally means that you are underexposed.

Conversely, if the histogram is bunched up towards the right, this generally means that you are overexposed.

If there are straight peaks pushed up directly against the left-hand side, this means that you have clipped your shadows. This could make the image look muddy and noisy when trying to recover those shadows.

If there are straight peaks pushed up directly against the right-hand side, this means that you have clipped your whites. Clipping your whites means you have information that is unrecoverable in post processing.

A balanced histogram is a histogram with peaks across the entirety of the graph and not pushed up directly against the left side or the right side. This is what you are aiming for when using Manual Mode for your street photography.

Auto ISO

Auto ISO is great as it lets you set a minimum ISO and the maximum ISO that you want the camera to automatically work within. Using Auto ISO in Manual Mode gives you complete control over your aperture and your shutter speed, whilst the camera picks the ISO.

Examples of how it works

Imagine if you are on the streets and you are shooting candid street photography with somebody walking past a billboard under a bridge. You will want to use a fast shutter speed to freeze them walking, and therefore the camera will use a moderately high ISO (especially as you are under a bridge). Suddenly, your subject stops lights up a cigarette and leans against the billboard. Having control over your shutter speed means that you can slow down the shutter speed and let the camera take advantage of a lower ISO whilst you shoot your subject.

Of course, you can overexpose and underexpose quite easily using Auto ISO in Manual Mode.

Imagine that you have been shooting people walking in a park on a cloudy day and you have been using a shutter speed of 1/250 sec, an aperture of f/8, and ISO 400. Suddenly you see some interesting characters on a park bench who are sitting and talking so you drop your shutter speed down to 1/125 sec, which is an increase in exposure of one stop. there is some messy foliage behind the subjects, therefore you want to open up the aperture for a creamy bokeh background so you open it to the lens’ widest aperture of f /2.8, which is a three stop increase in exposure. Seeing as the camera needs to compensate for four stops of exposure it drops the ISO to the base level of 100. However, this has only increased the exposure by two stops. The camera has nowhere to go with the ISO. The image is unfortunately overexposed.

If you were to go in the other direction, (which is highly unlikely as you won't be needing to use shutter speeds of 1/4000 sec for street photography), you could potentially underexpose the image. Imagine that your aperture was set to f /5.6 (if you were shooting at night time) and the Auto ISO had reached its maximum level that you set of ISO 6400 and it needed another stop of light to make the exposure. Therefore, the image would be underexposed. However, because you are using Auto ISO in Manual Mode, this time around, all you have to do is reduce your aperture by a stop, to f /4.

Conclusion

Manual Mode for street photography is brilliant if you want to learn how to use each aspect of the exposure triangle and if you want full control over the images that you are shooting. Once you've used it a few times, knowing how exposure works become second nature ultimately providing a great underpinning for your photographic know-how.

Go forth and create.

Street and Urban Photography Blog

The Definitive Guide to Manual Mode for Street Photographers