{"id":4614,"date":"2011-10-21T08:19:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T15:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?p=4614"},"modified":"2016-09-16T21:39:57","modified_gmt":"2016-09-17T04:39:57","slug":"how-to-shoot-with-a-flash-for-street-photography-by-charlie-kirk-twocutedogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/21\/how-to-shoot-with-a-flash-for-street-photography-by-charlie-kirk-twocutedogs\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Shoot with a Flash for Street Photography with a Film Leica"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend Charlie was generous enough to provide this article to discuss how he shoots street photography with a flash with his film\u00c2\u00a0Leica MP<\/a>. Also if you haven’t yet, check out his documentary<\/a> on Uchujin’s blog!<\/p>\n

I thought I should write a short piece about using a \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash for street photography. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t profess to be an expert on the technical side, so this is simply a few paragraphs about how I shoot and what I have learnt. I am writing from the perspective of a Leica MP user, although a large part of this will apply to anyone that wants to shoot \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash manually.<\/p>\n

Shutter Speed<\/h2>\n

The Leica MP has a \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash sync speed of 1\/50th of a second. What this means is that the shutter speed must be set to 1\/50 or slower – otherwise, for complicated and boring reasons, black bands appear on (I think) the left hand side of the photo. Practically this is a limitation. The background will likely blur unless the photographer has a steady hand. I tend to try to shoot at 1\/50th as much as possible to avoid this. Shooting at less will increase the blur. While some people might want this, I \u00ef\u00ac\u0081nd it distracting – especially in a city like Tokyo where what happens is that you will get a lot of light trails. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d encourage everyone to experiment.<\/p>\n

ISO<\/h2>\n

As with non \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash photography, I select the ISO according to the time of day and weather. The thing to remember with ISO (and aperture) is that these settings affect the distance that the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash can \u00ef\u00ac\u0081re. The lower the ISO the weaker the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash will be. Therefore to shoot in the day a very strong \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash (ie one with a high guide number) is required. I use the Nikon SB900. The other problem with shooting in the day is that the photographer is constrained by the slow sync speed. Therefore, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usually necessary to close down the lens to f\/22 to accommodate for the slow shutter speed.<\/p>\n

Aperture<\/h2>\n

I tend to want to have as much depth as \u00ef\u00ac\u0081eld as possible to account for focusing errors. The fastest I will shoot at is f\/8, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll only do this to let in more ambient light. The more closed down the lens the weaker the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash power.<\/p>\n

Approach<\/h2>\n

The general point to remember is to take a meter reading \u00ef\u00ac\u0081rst, setting the shutter speed to 1\/50th. For example, on a sunny day:<\/p>\n

Shutter speed – 1\/50th (constrained by x-sync).
\nISO 50
\nAperture – f\/11 – f\/22<\/p>\n

After this, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll underexpose the ambient by a stop or two for a more dramatic look. So, if the meter reads f\/11, I would set to f\/16.<\/p>\n

Then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll enter the ISO and the aperture into the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash and see what distance it gives me. For my \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash this will be about 1-2 meters. This means that my subjects need to be at the distance from the camera that is showing on the back of the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash. If I want to take a picture of a subject that is further away, I can zoom the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash, which sometimes might get me an extra meter or two.<\/p>\n

I take the same approach at night, although I care less about the ambient light as often the background is just black sky. The other difference at night is that the ISO will be 1600.<\/p>\n

This means that the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash reading will probably be around 5 or 6 meters. So I reduce the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash power to give me a 1 meter or so reading.<\/p>\n

A couple of \u00ef\u00ac\u0081nal points<\/h2>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m no technical expert, but one thing I have noticed is that the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash tends to freeze subjects when they are closer to the camera. This is important as a 1\/50th shutter speed will not freeze them. But when subjects are close it is very important to get the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash power correct, otherwise subjects will be under or overexposed. Underexposure is very common due to the inverse square law (light falls off more quickly the closer the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash is to the subject).<\/p>\n

The other point to note about the inverse square law is that it is very hard to light multiple subjects at different distances from the camera with one \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash, especially where the nearest subject is close to the camera. The only way around this is to bounce the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash off the ceiling, use more than one \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash, spread the \u00ef\u00ac\u201aash beam (if you have that setting) or shoot when the nearest subject is a bit further away.<\/p>\n

So that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about it. Please let Eric know if you have any questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Charlie was generous enough to provide this article to discuss how he shoots street photography with a flash with his film\u00c2\u00a0Leica MP. Also if you haven’t yet, check out his documentary on \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_ek_photo_artist_note":"","_ek_photo_thesis":"","_ek_photo_camera":"","_ek_photo_place":"","_ek_photo_human_moment":"","_ek_photo_sequence":"","_ek_photo_question":"","_ek_photo_canonical_claim":"","_ek_photo_ai_summary":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[676,980,979,942],"class_list":["post-4614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts","tag-charlie-kirk","tag-leica-mp","tag-street-photography-flash","tag-two-cute-dogs"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/6054552451_b26281cd96_z.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}