Being a blog owner I get all sorts of email. Can I do a guest post? Can you do a review of [insert product name here]? Is ShootTokyo for sale? Can you write a guide book on photowalks in Tokyo so I can sell it along with my others? Can you translate this for me? Can you buy product xyz and mail it to me? Can you buy a camera in Tokyo for me and send it to me? More than any other question I get the following two questions:

What camera should I buy?
What settings did you use?

The first one is a very personal choice. You need to consider how you want to use it, what you can afford, and what types of images you want to take. I wrote up why I chose Leica and why it works for me in the review I wrote on my Leica M9-P. Aside from that I don't have a lot of advice on other cameras unless it happens to be one of the others ones I use. There a plenty of camera review sites out there with very detailed reviews covering every technical aspect and every function possible. I am not that technical so those are always a better choice.

The second question is one I get a lot as well. I have been asked so many times to put my camera settings below each photo. I don't do it for a couple of reasons. It would be a huge administrative burden when writing blog posts, this is not an overly technical geeky site and I don't want to start debating camera settings endlessly and it is better for you to learn what setting to use and why depending on the image you want to produce.

I made a short video for my YouTube Channel where I talked through how I think about camera settings when I am shooting street photography: Street Photography Settings (for beginners). I remember when I first started out it was really hard to find very simply and easy to understand information about camera settings. It was difficult to find a write up on Street Photography Basics that I could use to help me get started. Everything seemed to be very complicated and not as specific as I was looking for. I would see images I love but couldn't figure out how to set my camera to make the images myself. Images just like these...

The issue a lot of people have when starting out is after learning about the settings in your camera how do you combine aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to get a properly exposed image that also as the look you what. Perhaps you want everything frozen in your image or some things a little blurry to imply movement and motion. And how do you do this while trying to compose the image. It can be really overwhelming. I wrote about a technique I call 'setting the stage' which I wrote about in a blog post at the begging of this year.

Yesterday I went back to the scene of the image above and shot a video to show you how I set up my shots, thinking about the exposure settings I talked about in my video Street Photography Settings.

The next video will cover how I process my Leica Monocrhom images. I hope you find these useful. If there are other topics you want me to cover leave a comment below.

Thanks for stopping by today...