Something Fishy!

Black and white photo of fish on ice on a market.

This picture was shot in Hoi An in Vietnam during a very nice holiday. We did a tour from the north of Vietnam to the south and visited all kinds of villages, cities, markets and temples. That day we had some time in Hoi An, a very nice village in the middle of the country, where most of the city is not accessible by car. We decided to go to the local market there.

Hoi An is really a beautiful town! So relaxed with no cars in the old centre. It was a relief in a very busy route from the north to the south of the country. We had a day off there and just started to explore the city and came across this market. There were fruits , meats and fish… what a bustling collection of smells, colours and photo opportunities!

The shot was made out of the hand when I saw those fishes. I feel embarashed to get my tripod out in a busy place, so handheld was the way to go. At that moment, I was not shooting on manual yet and tried to control everything by setting the aperture and was fixated on the lowest aperture that I could get with a fixed ISO at 100. With and F-number of 1.40 and the ISO at 100, the camera decided to set the exposure to 1/125th of a second. Almost too slow, so you see some unsharpness (can also be a result of the low F-number though), but it turned out great I think! The lens was a fixed lens of 50 mm.

In post I turned the picture in black and white. I did that in Adobe Lightroom, in which I also tweaked with the shadows, just to show some more of the details.
If I would make this picture again, I would have the F-value at about F5.6 to have more detail and sharpness in the photo and then the ISO at 700 or 800. The speed would then probably still be good to handle it off-tripod.
So, the picture was made on the spot without a tripod, without any fancy settings and only with minimalist post processing. That made this shot a great impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location