Street photography in low light

Dear all,

I recently purchased a Nikon D610 with a Tamron 24-70 f2.8. I went out to London for a low light night test. I basicallz moved from MILC camera for the fullframe's low light capability and I noticed that the camera missbehave in changing light conditions.

I used the following setting:
- Aperture priority mode
- Manual ISO
- I let the camera to choose the shutter speed
- Matrix metering

I found that if a car approaches towards me is makes my picture super-underexposed... I think it is because I use matrix metering. However with my previous Sony NEX a car did not make such a dramatic change on my pictures. It looks like if the camera averages the light (calculating the complete spectrum that needs to be covered) and then set the exposure to cover the middle of the spectrum with the available dynamic range... It is quite stupid since the camera should be set to capture as much details as possible even if there are some very bright things in the picture... ( if shadow details are dominating in the picture...)

I would be glad if some of you could recommend some techniques that improve my photography in such environment.

-----------------------------
I have some thoughts how to solve, but I am not sure.:
-I will try to use center weighted metering. In this case the exposure will stay more constant, however I do not think it is the final solution for the problem. I might experience a huge exposure variation in this case..
-I believe that I have to use full manual for such an environment. Once I set the ISO,Aperture, shutter speed to the lights I will stay constant, and the shooting experience will brings how to re-adjust these options for a new photo with slightly changed lightning-condition. I have to try it, but the next occasion for it is in one week time Hope I will get an answer for my issue..
Please, correct me if I am wrong.

Thank you very much, I enjoy being a new member of the Nikonites forum!

Bence

Doesn't do anything for me. Not sure where you're focus point was but the women don't seem to be tack sharp. White balance is off and the shadows are distracting.
Shooting a night is hard with out speedlights or a tripod. Did you use either? I would have pulled them away from the wall to eliminate the shadows and throw the background more out of focus. Every where I go I carry a sheet of white printer paper with me to do a custom white balance. Works everytime.

I think you answered your question yourself, partially at least. But you do not HAVE to restrict yourself to "manual mode" - quite on the contrary - fully manual mode might slow you down, especially when taking photos in the streets, light being low or not. Consider different options of AF (tracking etc.) and, as you yourself concluded, metering with different areas within the frame being emphasized (including the "spot") and see which suites you the best. I do not recommend the extensive use of flash, since it basically "ruins" the atmosphere, if it is the "dead of the night" feel, that you are trying to capture (however, you can use a flash's "suppressed mode" or "fill-light" to get, for example, bright faces in the front, with the dimly lit background with dominant neon or wolfram (yellow) lighting)...

Why not practice by using Aperture priority and seeing what settings the camera chooses in a given situation before jumping straight into Manual mode?

I used Manual from the minute I got my camera, and it took me longer to understand how to get a correct exposure than if I had let the camera do half the work and then copy it. Having said that, I have a better understanding than I would have done because of it.

What you need to appreciate is that it will take you a LOT longer to learn how to get pictures you are completely happy with than it would with a point and shoot - but the results when you get there are so much better!

FastGlass said:

Doesn't do anything for me. Not sure where you're focus point was but the women don't seem to be tack sharp. White balance is off and the shadows are distracting.
Shooting a night is hard with out speedlights or a tripod. Did you use either? I would have pulled them away from the wall to eliminate the shadows and throw the background more out of focus. Every where I go I carry a sheet of white printer paper with me to do a custom white balance. Works everytime.

Click to expand...

This picture was taken front of the Palace the day before yesterday when some nice ladies had some funny time around this monument. I was just a 'paparazzi', I tried to be as invisible as possible
Handheld at 70mm (I cannot check it now, but it was quite a long shutter speed), cropped down since I was quite far from them. The white balance gives back completely what i have seen there, so I am happy with it, but it is good the get comments which might improve my photography.
Tack sharp picture is not a key for good photo, especially when you print it in a postcard format On a print you will not even notice. I am taking photos to record the past, so If the light is low, I prefer to cut down the light with compensating the exposure rather than making artificial pictures.... Of cour this is not always the case, but this is how I take photos recently. I like to record what I can see!

Thank you for the comments and keep up!

southwestsam said:

Why not practice by using Aperture priority and seeing what settings the camera chooses in a given situation before jumping straight into Manual mode?

I used Manual from the minute I got my camera, and it took me longer to understand how to get a correct exposure than if I had let the camera do half the work and then copy it. Having said that, I have a better understanding than I would have done because of it.

What you need to appreciate is that it will take you a LOT longer to learn how to get pictures you are completely happy with than it would with a point and shoot - but the results when you get there are so much better!

Click to expand...

Hello! Thanks for your comment! As you can see in my first post I have used apperture priority mode with manual ISO. The shutter speed was set automatically by the camera. The reason why I posted here is because I go realy a lot of wrong exposed photos. I opened a new thread about matrix metering (Nikon D600/D610 topic) since I noticed that even if I used matrix metering the single AF point had quite a lot of weight on the exposure metering... Refer to that topic for more information about the issue, please.
I used always apperture priority with my compact MILC machine as well; for complex pictures I used manual, however I experienced different behaviour from the D610's exposure meter compared to the sony nex's metering system.

Manual will slow me down for sure, but I noticed that I cannot rely on automatic shutter speed selection. For example a car with strong light which is in my frame but still in the background blurred will makes the picture underexposed. I will give a try to spot and center weighted exposure metering, but the final solution will be the full manual (I think).

It seems to me you're over thinking your camera. Let the camera do its job. It's packed with all this advanced technology to free up messing with settings. If your camera came with AF, then by all means use it! Why complicate things further by being over technical with a highly advanced technical camera? Just my opinion. Others may vary.

fotojack said:

It seems to me you're over thinking your camera. Let the camera do its job. It's packed with all this advanced technology to free up messing with settings. If your camera came with AF, then by all means use it! Why complicate things further by being over technical with a highly advanced technical camera? Just my opinion. Others may vary.

Click to expand...

Maybe it is my English, but the reason why I opened this thread is that the automatic settings seemed to fail for many pictures. I do not complicate things, just the pictures that were taken two days are mostly underexposed with automatic settings...

Untitled | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Check this out. I better like to take such pictures than using automatic mode where the picture became middle exposed. This is what I saw. I like it better then corrected colors and things that i could not even see in the real life..

Expertneo said:

Untitled | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Check this out. I better like to take such pictures than using automatic mode where the picture became middle exposed. This is what I saw. I like it better then corrected colors and things that i could not even see in the real life..

Click to expand...

I don't see anything wrong with those pictures? What's the problem?

fotojack said:

I don't see anything wrong with those pictures? What's the problem?

Click to expand...

The D610 has a super-wide dynamic range which enables serious corrections in lightroom
The previous sentence is true, however these pictures are selected and processed with lightroom. Of course, I did not upload the bad pictures to my FlickR

For low light, I always use manual settings. Matrix metering will try to exposure the whole image correctly, yes. But automatic settings will try the same.. the camera doesn't know its dark, only you do.

wud said:

For low light, I always use manual settings. Matrix metering will try to exposure the whole image correctly, yes. But automatic settings will try the same.. the camera doesn't know its dark, only you do.

Click to expand...

Thank you! I set the half pressed shutter release button to EA-l and it is much much better. At least I know how the automatic mode behaves in certain situation. This weekend I will give a try to the methods I figured out. I will also try the full manual!