This is where my ‘challenge’ to myself begins….When shooting with my Leica M film camera I am always on manual mode. I have grown to love the feel and the M6 has a light meter which makes it easy. The problem is that with street work, it helps to adjust your settings very ‘fast’ and on the draw. That is the nature of street photography, and especially true if one is looking for the decisive moment, …of of which…I am turning a bit away from in my shooting philosophy.
I am leaning towards a more artistic shot…as evident by my last blog posting. I have been at this point for quite sometime and shooting with my manual Leica has come about well. But when shooting with my Ricoh GR, I have always used the “P” mode….as described by Eric Kim as his go-to mode. But the “P” mode, while obviously the fastest way to set up my shots, is not the most creative. In fact it lacks creativity all-told.
My challenge is shifting to the Manual mode in my GR….Since I am more ‘setting up my shots’ by the inherent location, (architecture, shadows, geometry etc), and then waiting for intangibles to float into the scene to give a bit of humanity to it, it makes sense to work manual.
I like the way Sean Tucker puts it…..don’t get worried about the numbers and dials. Look at the live-view and adjust the image based upon your view of the view. What does it look like with the existing settings in place. I plan on keeping my ISO to match the sun so between 100 and 400 is my thinking. I do want to have too much blur in the movement so the shutter will be set high enough, perhaps 500. So that leaves me with just the ‘f-stop’ which now becomes doable and quick. I can adjust to my view, not the camera’s settings.
I have shifted also to the ‘U” in my overall camera settings so not only manual but pre-set to certain features. That way I have U1 set to BW, U2 set to High Contrast BW and U3 set to Positive. This will make it easy to simply move in between those major effect settings. Other settings such as shadow or sharpness etc are already pre-set to my taste.
I enter a scene… adjust the settings to match and then wait. This serves my challenge and new style of photography better. Now, not pure ‘analog’ which is what the Leica provides, but I find myself going back and forth between analog and digital as my interests pull both ways. I am bi-mode or bi-tech, as both forms are classified as technology, right?