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Rad !!IpQSryGvPPO
Goddamn candids are next to impossible to do in my town. Few people really walk the streets where I live so if I'm in front of anybody with a camera they're going to notice if I raise it to take a picture.

Example: this guy was walking along with his stuff on his back and his eyes hidden behind his hat so I decided to try and take a picture of him and hoped he wouldn't notice. Well I'm trying to be stealthy and look around and not act as if I really notice him, then I put my camera to my eye as fast as I can, take the shot, lower it and look away as if nothing as happened. Then I see the picture and see the big grin on his face hahaha. Reminded me of a cccombo-breaker on /b/. I thought I would get it, but I didn't, and I was too far away as well. Still it made me laugh.

How can you do candids in a town that's nowhere near as busy as a city like NYC?
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>> $19.99 !OSYhGye6hY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkIWW6vwrvM
surprise them like bruce gilden.
>> Anonymous
>>208855
Lol, what a jerk. True /p/ material.

OP, try not taking pictures in their faces and use a long lens. Most people will ignore you unless you look unusual or approach them.
>> noclue !!2yUmAID3520
>>208870
you can get along like that really fine i believe. especially in a crowded place. just think of the possibilities! but never be an asshole to people.
(i liked that "imma photographer! don't smile!!")
>> Anonymous
>>208870
Long lenses flatten the subject, making it less dynamic.
>> Anonymous
>>208855
Oh wow. Rape photography, I should try it someday.

If he can get away with that, I dunno why I should have any problems taking normal candids.
/feels inspired and full of self-steeem
>> Anonymous
>>208855
>>208895
>>208870

lol that's pretty fucking awesome.
>> okto !.ZlrOYZhsk
-Prefocus with hyperfocals so you don't waste time focusing.
-Wait until you are right by your subject, both so they have less time to react, and so you can fill more of the frame with your subject.
-Try to photograph people from behind, then the side, then head-on. As you get more confident you'll be better able to handle (and control or anticipate) your interaction with your subject. Street photography is a dance, and both you and the subject are equal partners.
-Keep practicing. Street is fucking hard, and is something you have to do by feel. The only way to get the feel is to do it a lot.

What camera are you using, and how are you using it?
>> Anonymous
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>>209662
Adding some more:

-Use a prime, it'll teach you to compose better, and you won't be wasting time futzing the zoom into the right spot.
-Stick to moderate wides (~35mm equivalent) or normals, not even 28mm, learn to compose the easy lengths before you go wide, if you choose to do so at all.
-Try making it look like you're shooting something else. I got this in a town of about 30,000 by making it look like I was shooting seagulls- when I was shooting street there, but sometimes sticking the camera way out of the view of anyone up to the sky where there were some seagulls and decisively half-pressing the shutter. It's still one of the best street shots I've ever gotten.
>> Anonymous
>>208853
A bit odd, but I prefer places with less people nowadays. Although I haven't found a shot yet that I like, there are a lot of possibilities.

Here's a frequent shooting buddy's set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tranquil_thumb/sets/72157604215784705/
>> Anonymous
hints for street candids:

- Keep it on aperture priority and f/8.0.. if lower light try not to go lower than f/5.6.. bump up to ISO 400 if necessary

- Use a fast prime lens (somewhere between 24 and 30mm is good for a crop body).. theyre less prominent and indimidating.. the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 is great, autofocuses fast, and is great for low light.

- If they arent moving, pretend liek youre taking a picture of something near them, then just shoot them.

- Prefocus is easier to achieve at higher apertures since you wont have to worry about shallow DOF (hence the 8.0 suggestion)

- Dont be afraid of people's reactions.. obviously try to be stealthy so they dont fuck up the pic, but if they see you and get pissed, just say "Taking a photography class.. gotta take candids for this assignment" or just smile at them and walk away.
>> Anonymous
>>209727

Your friend should try shooting such less contrasty situations.
>> Anonymous
Where I live, if I go out I might see 5 people out so there's not many opportunities for me.
>> kitty
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>>208853
i used to live in a small town too, where candid photography was next to impossible. just figure out where most people gravitate to, such as a movie theater or a bar, and hang around, all suspicious and such.
eventually, you're going to get some good shots, and if it's a well-lit place and you're close enough, it should turn out okay.
i personally like the park. as long as parents don't freak out.

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>> Anonymous
Ok, wtf, I enter this thread already in progress with some advice that has been overlooked:

Shoot from the hip.

Yes, that's right, shoot from the hip, like this:
Step 1: meter - set up your focus, aperture, and shutter speeds. If you are shooting digital, you can use an auto mode of Some Sort, but I recommend against auto-focus.

Step 2:Get your camera of any size, hang it around your neck, carry something else in your arms - jacket/backpack/grocery bag/book/whatever - so it looks like you are just carrying shit.

Step 3:Shoot away while walking. Turn the camera in different directions and keep shooting, but don't look down at it. You don't have to take pictures in the direction you are facing. Shoot a lot, because most will look like crap.
The noise of the city will cover up the sound of the shutter, and you aren't being suspicious or furtive in your body language, you are just walking with your arms full of shit.

Step 4: sort through your pictures and discard like 80% of them, because they are blurred, over/under exposed, suck, etc.
(continued)
>> I can haz camera !QgACNkSwFA
>>210500
Sidenote about focus and aperture:
I am not a fan of autofocus when shooting without looking, because it is nearly impossible to tell what will be in focus. I think it is better to set your focus to a certain distance and open your aperture fairly wide, in the 6.3 to 3.2 range. (I've done 2.8 or even 1.4, but it is very unforgiving and things are more often out of focus than not).
Stop and take a picture (normally) of something at a good distance - say, 10 paces with a 50mm lens. Leave you focus on that distance, and when you take pictures of a person at that distance, they will be in focus, but the shallower depth of field will emphasize them.
Alternatively, you can take the safe route and go narrow to ensure your subjects are in focus. You will have more focussed pictures, but depending on your style or desires, it may hurt your chances of a beautiful shot.

Shutter speeds: 1/60 is fine for standing still with a 50mm but will be quite blurred while walking. I recommend much higher, like 1/250. If you are trying to get the motion blur of people, you can go lower and take the picture while standing still BUT still shooting from the hip, even better if you are facing another direction and talking to a friend.


Bottom line is that shooting from the hip prevents people from noticing your camera, even if they see it.
>> Depressed Cheesecake !wFh1Fw9wBU
>>209735
>Keep it on aperture priority and f/8.0.
>Use a fast prime lens

lolwut?
>> Anonymous
>>208855
THIS GUY IS AWESOME!!1
>> Anonymous
>>208855
LOL
"I don't care about the question."
"I know you don't care about the question."
>> Depressed Cheesecake !wFh1Fw9wBU
>>208855
That was kick ass
>> Anonymous
     File :-(, x)
Have some more street.

>>210500
WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO SCREW UP THE OP?

Even Garry Winogrand, Mr. Loose, Fast Shooter, would not shoot from the hip. It's the worst thing possible.

Pre-setting everything: yes. Do that. You know what you want in advance anyway and it's easy to slide the little wheel a stop here or there, a few meters more in or out, but just raise the camera to your eye so you know what you get and can creatively fine-tune your composition. Takes just a second, no one notices if your technique is good.

Shooting like you're saying- you're picking subjects, not creating photographs.

>>210503
The fast part doesn't really matter, most really fast lenses reach their best around f/5.6 or more anyway. But primes definitely.
>> I can haz camera !QgACNkSwFA
>>210525
perhaps you can explain, briefly, why it is the worst thing possible. In my posts I mentioned why it works, maybe you can tell us all why you think it doesn't.

The you can go and try it, or research it, and quickly understand that it is a viable technique for the reasons I mentioned, which brings me to another point:

There isn't any single perfect technique. OP, you have to get out there and find out what works for you, and figuring that out cannot be done in just a single photo shoot.
>> Anonymous
>>210532
Because all you're doing is picking what you want to take a picture of. You're defining nothing about what's included or excluded from the frame except the subject, you're not picking what corner of the frame the subject lies in. You're not composing, you're just picking a subject.

I have done it when I've been a cowardly weasel and not had the balls to raise the camera to my face even for that brief second. It's a bad substitute, not a replacement, for good technique.
>> sage !i/euDJmWr2
>>210537
Err...you can compose without seeing in the viewfinder, you know. By the way you're saying it, it would be impossible for a person to compose a picture with a camera with parallax distortion because they couldn't accurately see what they were framing.

If you've never shot from the hip before then it's random, but if you practice with it you will learn by feel and be able to compose from the hip as well.
>> Anonymous
some of this has already been covered:

1. forget long lenses, i'm sure we've already established this.

2. don't be a pussy about wide lenses. it isn't hard to compose with a 28 (full frame), so you don't need to "practice" on a 35 or 50 unless you like those lenses and want to use them. dive in. of course, anything too wide or too long is just stupid and will look stupid.

3. don't shoot from the hip, composition is the most important part and you'll have better results if you actually put your face to the gaddamn camera.

4. fuck fast lenses, seriously, no one gives a shit. you can take much better photos with some originality and an f4 than some japanese fag with a 50 f1.2 and his photos of a fucking coffee mug.

5. people aren't going to notice you. if they do, tell them you have a fancy long lens and were taking a photo of a damn seagull- this won't happen though, people will be too afraid of challenging you.

6. Rad, the photos i've seen from you have been consistently awesome, you do well with black and white and even with the combo-breaker its a good photo. love those palms.


everyone read this now

http://2point8.whileseated.org/wow-footer/
>> okto !.ZlrOYZhsk
Fuck shooting from the hip. Shooting from the hip is fine when it's your first time out on the street. After that it's a crutch and a dodge, unless you happen to be fantastic at aiming a camera without the VF. 80% of your shots will be of nothing, 15% will be ruined by seeing up people's noses. 5% hit ratio is nothing to get excited about, even for street.

Street is about being IN the situation and from photographing inside of it, as a part of it, not being sneaky. If you can't confront strangers with a camera, you can't shoot street. It's really that simple. You can take candids, sure, but street-photography-the-genre is a very specific thing and it is very much about being involved with your subject.
Not in the way one is involved in a conversation, but the way a sculptor is involved with the marble.

>>210503
Fast lens for brighter VF, f/8 for DoF.
>> Anonymous
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>>210540
There's a huge difference between pointing a camera in a general direction and using a non-TTL finder. Really. Get yourself even a little consumer point and shoot with an optical viewfinder and try framing with and without the viewfinder. I noticed recently that BestBuy stores stock the G9; it has one. Even though it's almost the shittiest optical finder I've seen, it'll still be noticably better than without.

With practice, one can- and should- get a rough idea of framing just by looking at a scene. But it's still very useful to actually see the edges of the viewfinder or the brightlines, get it down right, make sure everything's level, etc.

How close do you usually shoot? If you're shooting someone a moderate distance, as opposed to far away where slop is covered and close up where your camera is pointing right at the subject, it's hard to, say, make sure their hand is almost at the edge of the frame, as in>>209669, or this attached picture by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Try framing like that without a viewfinder.


Look at it this way: if you were a painter, would you turn around away from the subject and your canvas while painting, or would you be looking at it, making sure you're putting the right brushstroke the right distance from the edge of the canvas?
>> sage !i/euDJmWr2
>>210571
That analogy is completely off...never make that poor of a comparison again, please?

Anyway, I'm not saying that shooting from the hip is the best thing to do, but implying that it's always random is completely off base. You learn to compensate with a non TTL viewfinder, and to a greater degree you've got to learn to compensate when shooting from the hip. If you change lenses constantly and you're not well-adjusted to a particular focal length it's harder, but if you're almost always working with the same lens then you can "guess" the framing pretty accurately.

Out of curiousity, do you close your right eye (or left, whichever eye you don't look through the viewfinder with) when you take a picture? You sound like you get disoriented easily when you can't concentrate fully on the viewfinder.
>> Anonymous
>>210578
>That analogy is completely off...never make that poor of a comparison again, please?

How so?

>but if you're almost always working with the same lens then you can "guess" the framing pretty accurately.

Yes, and it's very useful to have an idea in mind before you bring the camera up to your eye, but you can't really master the edges down. The best photographs are composed holistically, from edge to edge.

>Out of curiousity, do you close your right eye (or left, whichever eye you don't look through the viewfinder with) when you take a picture?

No, I was actually shocked with someone complimented me on keeping two eyes open as being good technique. Before I didn't realize anyone ever closed one of their eyes. I'm much more of a concentrate-on-the-scene-and-subject type of guy. Having a good viewfinder that one can use precisely and at the same time intuitively, in the mental background, lets that happen.
>> Anonymous
>>210541
Thank you. Best fucking thread on /p/.
>> Depressed Cheesecake !wFh1Fw9wBU
>>210564
True, but you don't need a viewfinder if you're going to be shooting at f/8.
>> Anonymous
>>210595
What?
>> Anonymous
>>210595
And thus another chapter is finalized in the ongoing novel, "The Idiot and The Enter Key".
>> Rad !!IpQSryGvPPO
Sweet, great tips in this thread.

>>210541

Haha thanks dude. That's a really good link too.

>>210500

>sort through your pictures and discard like 80% of them

Not good if you're using film though.

Also, Bruce Gilden kicks ass.
>> Anonymous
>>210595
True, and most of your shots will be shit. The remainder will be the product of luck and not of skill.

Fine, go shoot from the hip and be the dude with shit photos and shit skills who sometimes (very rarely) becomes really lucky.
>> Depressed Cheesecake !wFh1Fw9wBU
>>210635
I'm not advocating shooting from the hip, but if you're going to use the viewfinder to focus, what's the point of shooting at f8?
>> Anonymous
>>210637
One of the purposes of the viewfinder is to aid in composition. Learn what to include and exclude in the frame instead of being lazy by cropping everything later.
>> Anonymous
>>210637
Because not everything is in focus after f/8 and you're a drooling retard?
>> Depressed Cheesecake !wFh1Fw9wBU
>>210642
We're shooting on the street, not a fucking landscape, doucheface.
>> Anonymous
>>210646
Yeah, because infinity starts at .5 meters, not 6-12 meters. I can't believe you even make comments anymore.
>> Depressed Cheesecake !wFh1Fw9wBU
>>210648
f8 is going to put more than .5 meters in focus, lurk the fuck more.
>> Anonymous
>>210646
what a tool
>> Anonymous
>>210667
Yeah, it'll put MFD to maybe 2m in focus. So as long as nothing interesting is more than 6 feet away, you're fine! Idiot.
>> Depressed Cheesecake !wFh1Fw9wBU
>>210672
Yes, you are an idiot. Learn how a camera works and stop posting misinformation. I don't even know why I bother feeding the trolls ... you are all so retarded.
>> Anonymous
>>210678
What's misinformation about physics? On my 24mm lens, when focusing at the minimum focusing distance of .25m, f/8 puts everything from MFD to .35m into focus. Extreme example? Okay, switch it around. At infinity, f/8 puts everything from INF to 1m into focus. It's a very short range, and you would know this if you knew anything. f/8 HARDLY makes everything equal to infinity.
>> Depressed Cheesecake !wFh1Fw9wBU
>>210679
I never said infinity. If you're shooting from the hip, which I didn't even recommend, and you put your camera at f8 on the street, chances are everything you want to be in focus will be in focus. On my 50mm, f8 puts about +/- 1.5 meters in focus.
>> Anonymous
>>210681
>chances are everything you want to be in focus will be in focus.
You can't possibly judge this without focusing, even from the hip. You said a viewfinder (thus, composing/focusing) wouldn't matter if you're at f/8. You're totally fucking wrong.
>On my 50mm
Not suitable for from-the-hip street photography (which is the only time you wouldn't take time to focus through the viewfinder). Also, the longer the focal length of a lens, the more it brings into focus at smaller apertures, again emphasizing that wider angles used for street photography have way too much DOF still at f/8.

Learn how a camera works yourself.
>> Anonymous
>>208855
what an interesting fellow
>> Rad !!IpQSryGvPPO
     File :-(, x)
I just got a Rollei B35 and I'm going to see if I can't try some street with it. Should be interested.

Pic related but I didn't take it. The camera is tiny.
>> Anonymous
>>210700

Hey guys, I just got this new super-small paintbrush, I'm gonna go see if I can make some art with it later.

Protip: The equipment you use doesn't matter, so long as you actually know how to use it.
>> Anonymous
>>210684
wut?
Apparent* depth of field INCREASES with wide angle lenses.
And you tell other people to learn about cameras...
I love /p/

*http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/dof2.shtml
Seems to go against what I'm saying to a degree, but siI feel like you understand DoF so little at this point, some reading couldn't hurt.
>> okto !.ZlrOYZhsk
>>210637
Focus speed, my dairy friend. If you're focused on, say, 3m at f/8, everything from 2.5-4m is in focus, so for anything in that range your focus speed is infinitely small.

That's with a fifty. With my trusty 28, focused on the hyperfocal (3.29 m), everything from 1.6 m to infinity is in focus, so unless someone is right next to me, I never need to focus.

1/inf focusing speed FTW.
>> Anonymous
>>210637
>>210642
>>210646
>>210648
>>210667
fail fail fail fail fail

>>210672
nothing interesting IS more than 6 feet away, this is street
>> Anonymous
>>210765
Ok but there also isn't anything of interest at infinity.
So lets use the example of a 28mm lens at f8.
If you focus at 7 feet, using your focus scale on your lens, everything between 4 feet infront of the lens, and 20 feet, will be in focus.
That's a pretty easy range to guess about, you've got 15 feet of buffer before you fuck something up.
Stopping down ONE MORE STOP to f/11 gives a SEVENTY FIVE feet, instead of 15, that should be plenty, unless you're a fuckup, like most of you are.
>> okto !.ZlrOYZhsk
>>210772
I have a hard time imagining even Anon fucking up the shot with 75 feet of backfocus.
>> Anonymous
>>210777
You're giving them far too much credit.

Said the anon...
>> Anonymous
DC, what the hell? How would you not need a viewfinder just because the focus is set? Fixed-focus disposable cameras have viewfinders.
>> Anonymous
ITT: math & faggots
>> Anonymous
OK folks, here's a link:

http://www.outsight.com/hyperfocal.html#hyper

It's called hyperfocal focusing and any (decent) photo 101 class usually covers it.

As far as shooting from the hip goes:

1: It shakes up your preconceptions about composition. You take pictures you normally wouldn't.
2; Yes, it's true that a lot won't come out right, but that one "happy accident" out of ten is worth it. Choosing that one shot is the same artistic decision as composing in the viewfinder, it's just a little more random of a way to get there. If you are shooting digital it's not like you're "wasting film", though even film photographers shoudn't be concerned about that anyway.
>> Anonymous
>>210503
>>210503

during the daytime, idiot.

fast is for when its getting dark / dusk.
>> Anonymous
>>210541

PROTIP: f/1.4 is pretty fast.
>> okto !.ZlrOYZhsk
>>210885
A hundred monkeys typing, tl;dr, Shakespeare.

I'm not satisfied with a 10% hit ratio. That's why I look at my pictures before I take them. Even if you get an awesome shot from the hip, it's no credit to you because you didn't make it happen, it was an accident of chance.
>> Anonymous
>>210889
i said f/4, which isn't very fast. sorry bud.