Street photography : Basic Camera Settings and Techniques

Gearing Up: Choosing the Right Tool for the Street

Why Your Camera Matters (and Why It Doesn’t)

Let’s address the most common question first: “What’s the best camera for street photography?” The honest answer is that the best camera is the one you have with you. Legendary photographers have created iconic images with everything from bulky film cameras to simple point-and-shoots. The gear is a tool, but your vision, timing, and understanding of light are what truly make a compelling photograph. Skill and a keen eye will always trump expensive equipment.

That being said, certain cameras do make the job easier. For street photography, discretion is often key. A large, professional DSLR with a massive lens can be intimidating to subjects and draw unwanted attention. This is why many street photographers gravitate towards smaller, more unobtrusive systems:

• Mirrorless Cameras: These offer the quality and control of a DSLR in a much smaller, lighter package. Their silent electronic shutters are a significant advantage for candid shots.
• Rangefinders: A classic choice, beloved for their compact size, tactile feel, and the ability to see outside the frame lines, helping you anticipate moments before they happen.
• High-End Compacts: Cameras with fixed lenses, like the Ricoh GR or Fujifilm X100 series, are pocketable powerhouses designed with street shooting in mind.

Ultimately, don’t let a lack of “proper” gear stop you. Your smartphone is an incredibly capable and discreet camera that’s always in your pocket. Learning to master composition and light with the tool you already own is far more valuable than waiting for the perfect camera. For more on this, check out our comprehensive guide to using your smartphone for street photography.

The Ideal Street Photography Lens

If the camera body is the brain, the lens is the eye. Your lens choice directly influences your perspective and how you interact with the world. While versatile zoom lenses have their place, many street photographers prefer prime lenses (lenses with a fixed focal length). Primes are typically smaller, lighter, and optically sharper than zooms. They also force you to “zoom with your feet”—moving your body to frame the shot, which leads to more deliberate and engaging compositions.

Three classic focal lengths have dominated street photography for decades, each offering a unique way of seeing the world:

• 28mm: This wide-angle view is perfect for capturing immersive scenes. It pulls in a lot of the environment, making it great for layered compositions and getting close to the action. It requires you to be in the midst of the scene.
• 35mm: Often considered the quintessential focal length for street photography. It’s wide enough to tell a story and include context, but not so wide that it causes significant distortion. It strikes a beautiful balance between subject and environment.
• 50mm: This focal length closely approximates the perspective of the human eye. It offers a natural field of view and is excellent for isolating subjects, shooting portraits, and capturing details without being too “in your face.”

You’ll also frequently hear photographers talk about a “fast” lens. This simply refers to a lens with a very wide maximum aperture, such as f/1.4, f/1.8, or f/2. A wider aperture lets more light into the camera, which is a tremendous advantage. It allows you to use faster shutter speeds in lower light (like on overcast days or in the evening) and to achieve a shallow depth of field, beautifully blurring the background to make your subject stand out from a chaotic street scene. Understanding how to manage aperture, shutter speed, and ISO is crucial for controlling your images; you can learn more about this in our guide on mastering the exposure triangle.

Nailing the Shot: Essential Camera Settings

The street is a fast-moving, unpredictable theater. To capture its fleeting moments, you need to be faster. This doesn’t mean having the quickest reflexes, but rather having your camera set up and ready to react. Understanding the exposure triangle—aperture, shutter speed, and ISO—and mastering your focus settings will transform your camera from a complex machine into an extension of your eye.

Choosing Your Shooting Mode

Modern cameras offer several shooting modes, but for street photography, a few stand out for their blend of control and efficiency. Your goal is to minimize time spent fiddling with settings and maximize time observing the world around you.

• Aperture Priority (A/Av): The Go-To Mode: This is the preferred mode for the vast majority of street photographers, and for good reason. It provides the perfect balance of creative control and automated speed. You choose the aperture (f-stop) to control the depth of field—how much of your scene is in focus—and the camera instantly calculates the correct shutter speed for a good exposure. In the rapidly changing light and spontaneous action of the street, this allows you to focus on composition and the moment, knowing the technical side is largely handled.
• Shutter Priority (S/Tv): In this mode, you set the shutter speed, and the camera chooses the aperture. It’s less common for general street work but becomes invaluable when you specifically want to control motion. If you want to freeze a fast-moving subject or intentionally create motion blur, Shutter Priority gives you direct control over that key variable.
• Manual Mode (M): Manual mode gives you full control over every setting. While this can be too slow for unpredictable street scenarios, it excels in situations with consistent, unchanging light. If you find a great patch of light on a wall and decide to wait for a subject to walk through it, setting your exposure manually ensures every shot in that spot is perfectly and consistently exposed.

Aperture: Controlling Depth of Field

Aperture, measured in f-stops (like f/1.8, f/8, f/16), controls two things: the amount of light entering your lens and the depth of field (DoF). In street photography, DoF is a powerful storytelling tool.

• Deep Depth of Field (f/8 – f/16): A smaller aperture (higher f-number) keeps more of the scene in focus from front to back. This is perfect for layered compositions where you want the subject, the background, and the urban environment to all be sharp and tell a complete story. It provides context and a sense of place.
• Shallow Depth of Field (f/1.8 – f/4): A wide aperture (lower f-number) creates a very narrow plane of focus, causing the background to blur beautifully. This is a fantastic technique for isolating a single person from a chaotic, busy background, drawing the viewer’s eye directly to your intended subject.
• The “f/8 and be there” philosophy: This is a classic street photography mantra. Setting your aperture to f/8 provides a generous depth of field, ensuring most of your scene will be acceptably sharp. It’s a reliable, “set-it-and-forget-it” approach that lets you focus on finding and capturing the moment, which is, after all, the most important part.

Shutter Speed: Freezing the Moment

Shutter speed determines how long your camera’s sensor is exposed to light. It’s your primary tool for controlling motion, either by stopping it dead in its tracks or by embracing its blur.

• Freezing Motion (1/250s and above): To capture the crisp, candid moments that define street photography—a gesture, a glance, a confident stride—you need a fast shutter speed. A setting of 1/250s is a good starting point, but for faster-moving subjects or to eliminate all traces of blur, pushing it to 1/500s or 1/1000s is often necessary.
• Creating Motion Blur (below 1/60s): Sometimes, showing motion is more powerful than freezing it. A slow shutter speed can turn moving cars into streaks of light or a crowd into a fluid blur, contrasting with a static subject. A popular technique is the panning shot. Imagine a cyclist riding past. You can use a slower shutter speed, like 1/30s, and ‘pan’ your camera to follow their movement. The result is a sharp cyclist against a beautifully blurred, streaky background, conveying a powerful sense of speed.
• Rule of Thumb: To avoid blurry photos from your own hand-shake, a general rule is to use a shutter speed that is at least the reciprocal of your focal length. For example, if you’re using a 50mm lens, your shutter speed should be at least 1/50s. With a 35mm lens, aim for 1/35s or faster.

ISO: Mastering Light

ISO measures your camera sensor’s sensitivity to light. It’s the third part of the exposure triangle and is crucial for getting a proper exposure when light is limited. Think of it as artificially brightening your image.

• Keeping ISO low (100-400): In bright, sunny conditions, always use the lowest possible ISO (often called the “base ISO,” like 100 or 200). This produces the cleanest, highest-quality images with the most detail and least amount of digital noise.
• When to increase ISO: As the light fades on an overcast day, in the evening, or when you step indoors, you’ll need to increase your ISO to maintain a fast enough shutter speed to avoid blur. Don’t be afraid to push it to 800, 1600, 3200, or even higher. A slightly grainy photo is always better than a blurry one.
• Understanding the Trade-off: The compromise for this increased light sensitivity is digital noise, which appears as a grainy texture in your image. Modern cameras handle high ISOs remarkably well, but it’s a trade-off to be aware of. The goal is to use an ISO just high enough to get the shot you need.

Focus Settings for Spontaneity

On the street, moments disappear in an instant. Fumbling with focus is the surest way to miss a great shot. Setting up your focus method beforehand is a professional’s secret to being ready for anything.

Auto-Focus Modes

• Single (AF-S) vs. Continuous (AF-C): For most street photography, AF-S (Single-Servo AF) is ideal. You half-press the shutter, the camera locks focus on a stationary subject, and it stays there. AF-C (Continuous-Servo AF) is better for tracking subjects moving towards or away from you, as it constantly readjusts focus.
• Using a Single Focus Point: Instead of letting the camera guess what to focus on with its myriad of focus points, take control. Select a single, movable focus point. This allows you to place the point directly over your subject’s eye or the most important element in the frame, ensuring critical sharpness exactly where you want it.

Zone Focusing: The Secret to Never Missing a Shot

This is arguably the fastest and most reliable focusing technique for street photography. Instead of relying on autofocus, you manually pre-focus your lens to a specific distance. By combining this with a moderate aperture like f/8 or f/11, you create a “zone” of acceptable sharpness. For example, you can set your focus so that everything from 2 to 5 meters away from you is in focus. This allows you to simply raise your camera and shoot instantly when a subject enters that zone, completely bypassing any autofocus lag. It takes practice but is a game-changer for candid work.

Simply put, hyperfocal distance is a related, more advanced version of this. It’s the focusing distance that gives you the maximum possible depth of field, often keeping everything from a few feet in front of you all the way to the horizon in focus.

Metering and Exposure

Your camera’s light meter measures the brightness of a scene to determine the right exposure. Understanding how to use it—and when to override it—is key to nailing your shot in tricky lighting.

• Matrix/Evaluative Metering: This is the default mode on most cameras. It reads light from the entire frame and calculates an average exposure. It works perfectly for 80% of situations and is a great all-purpose setting.
• Spot/Center-Weighted Metering: When your scene has high contrast—like a person illuminated by a single sliver of light in a dark alley—Matrix metering can get confused. Spot Metering reads light from a very small point, allowing you to tell the camera to expose perfectly for your subject’s face, letting the dark background fall to black. Center-Weighted is a middle ground, prioritizing the center of the frame.
• Using Exposure Compensation (+/-): This is your quick-fix button. If your camera’s meter makes a scene look too dark, dial in positive compensation (+1, +2) to brighten it. If it’s too bright, use negative compensation (-1, -2). It’s an essential tool for quickly adjusting your exposure without changing modes.

On the Pavement: Core Street Photography Techniques

With your camera settings dialed in, the real work begins on the street. Technical proficiency is only half the battle; the other half is learning to see the world like a photographer. This involves mastering composition, honing your observational skills, and confidently navigating the urban environment. These techniques are the building blocks of compelling street photography.

Composition is King

How you arrange elements within your frame can transform a mundane scene into a captivating story. While rules are made to be broken, understanding the fundamentals of composition gives you a powerful visual language to work with. Explore advanced compositional techniques for even more impact.

• Rule of Thirds: Imagine your frame is divided into nine equal rectangles by two horizontal and two vertical lines. Instead of placing your subject dead center, position them along these lines or at their intersections. This simple shift creates a more balanced and visually engaging image.
• Leading Lines: Use natural lines within the scene—like roads, fences, building edges, or even long shadows—to guide the viewer’s eye through the photograph, often leading directly to your main subject. This creates a sense of depth and direction.
• Framing: Look for natural frames within the environment. Shooting through a doorway, an archway, a window, or between two closely parked cars can add context, create depth, and draw focused attention to your subject.
• Capturing Layers: Great street photos often have a sense of three-dimensionality. Achieve this by composing your shot with distinct elements in the foreground, mid-ground, and background. This layering technique makes the scene feel immersive and complex.

The Art of Observation

Street photography is 90% observation and 10% shooting. It requires patience and an ability to anticipate moments before they happen. Slow down, be present, and learn to see the stories unfolding around you. Understanding how to master the art of invisibility can greatly enhance your observational skills.

• Finding a Spot and “Fishing”: Instead of constantly walking, find a location with interesting light, a compelling background, or high foot traffic. Plant yourself there and wait for the right character or moment to enter your scene. This is often called “fishing,” and it requires immense patience.
• Identifying Interesting Light and Shadows: Light is your most powerful tool. Look for dramatic shadows, slivers of light cutting through dark alleys, reflections in puddles, or the soft, even light of an overcast day. The quality of light dictates the mood of your photograph. Mastering manipulating light and shadows is crucial.
• Looking for Juxtaposition: The street is full of contrasts. Telling a story often involves capturing these opposing elements in a single frame. Look for juxtapositions like old and new (a historic building next to a modern skyscraper), rich and poor (a luxury car driving past a homeless person), or fast and slow (a person rushing past someone sitting peacefully on a bench).

Interacting with Your Environment

Navigating the streets as a photographer is a delicate dance. Your goal is to capture authentic moments, which requires a blend of discretion, confidence, and respect for the people and places you photograph. Always be mindful of ethics in street photography and legal issues.

• Shooting Candidly: The art of being invisible is key. Move calmly and deliberately. Hold your camera at chest or waist level instead of constantly raising it to your eye. Often, the best approach is to act like you belong there, as if you’re just another person going about your day.
• Approaching People: If you see someone with a fascinating look and want a more posed portrait, a simple smile and a polite request can go a long way. Be prepared for a “no,” but you’ll be surprised how often people are flattered and agree. If you’ve taken a candid shot and someone notices, a friendly nod and smile can de-escalate any potential tension.
• Understanding Local Laws and Etiquette: Photography laws in public spaces vary significantly around the world. In most Western countries, you are generally free to photograph people in public places without their consent. However, cultural norms can differ. Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. Always research the specific laws and cultural sensitivities of the location you are shooting in.

Building Your Confidence

Feeling self-conscious is one of the biggest hurdles for new street photographers. The fear of confrontation or being noticed is normal, but it can be overcome with practice. Consider developing personal street photography projects to build confidence.

• Start Close to Home: Begin by shooting in your own neighborhood or a familiar part of town. Being in a comfortable environment allows you to focus on your technique without the added stress of being in a new place.
• Shoot Through Glass: A great way to ease into the craft is by shooting from inside a café, bus, or shop. This puts a physical barrier between you and your subjects, allowing you to observe and shoot candidly while feeling more discreet. The reflections in the glass can also add an interesting creative layer.
• Focus on a Project: Instead of just wandering aimlessly, give yourself a theme or a mission. For example, decide to only photograph people wearing red, or focus on interesting doorways, or capture scenes of people interacting with their phones. Having a specific goal can make you feel less like you’re randomly pointing a camera at strangers.
• Remember: Most people don’t notice or don’t care. This is the most important lesson. In a busy city, you are just part of the background noise. Most people are too absorbed in their own worlds to notice a photographer. Act with confidence, and you’ll blend right in.