A small guide to Street Photography PT. 8

Here we are in this guide to a recurring theme. And it cannot be otherwise. What camera is the best for Street Photography?

Analog or digital? In this photo you can see the glorious Olympus Pen and in the background the Fujifilm X100S.

I am asked a lot of times what camera is the best for making Street Photography. The answer is that I don’t have an answer. Or at least the answer cannot be simple because it is really a complex issue.

Let’s start with saying that the issue of what camera is a personal matter. It depends on the photographer you are, what you need to do and what you want from your camera. It depends from the experience. It depends from your hands. It depends where you live and where you go to photograph.

There is a wide range of cameras and lenses that can be used for Street Photography and it can be very difficult to make a choice. The first recommendation I feel like doing is to avoid taking the latest news from the market. Nowadays the cameras of 5 years ago or even older are advanced cameras that allow to make a good work with.

One of the best things when it comes to Street Photography is that it really isn’t about gear, you can take Street Photographs with anything, and for anything I mean from DSLR to a smartphone. And again, i depends really from who you are as a photographer and what works good for you. It is personal. Deeply personal.

Of course I have my ideas and for serious Street Photography I can talk about my experience and what allows me to make the street photos that I really want. Of course you can do street shots also with a smartphone. So many photographers are doing it. I don’t. And I will explain why.

I come from an era where photography was only real. What I mean? Photography was only film photography, And there was not the computational photography. This is the main issue with smartphones. There is a fact we can delete it and it is because the law of physics does not allow it. I refer to the fact of the lenses. Despite you can achieve cool results with a smartphone, these devices have reached the maximum point and, unless the size of the lens body increases, software must be used.

Also when I go to the street to photograph I need to work at my best and by better I mean full manual: manual exposure and manual focus. Only in this way is a photographer able to truly control and not make the compromise of relying on the intelligence of the camera. Autofocus will always read the situation in a way that is not human. It could never be. What if I wanted the foreground element out of focus?

Many tend to forget it, or have never even thought about it, but photography and its history were done in a really simple way. With instruments without autofocus. The photographs that we all love and recognize as those made by the masters of photography did not count on the technological conditioning of today.

If you are a geek photographer, more a camera tester than a photographer, you will love every convenience of not thinking today. But photography made with heart and soul has nothing to do with extreme sharpness. Street Photography is not about technique and technique in our case is just put at the service that you want to achieve.

As a street photographer I need seriously a camera that is small, discreet, very quiet, fast to operate (you can read dials with me) with an acceptable image quality (APS-C is absolutely fine to me), and a lens ranging from 28 to 35 mm equivalent on a full frame camera.

I turn off the sound and autofocus assist lights and that the camera has no shutter lag when I make photos: despite I photographed in the past with cameras where was not possible to rely on manual focus because they were focused on menu and not dials, today I need cameras allowing me to work in manual.

We are living an era where cameras manufacturers are proposing fantastic Street Photography cameras. I used in the past Olympus and Panasonic cameras. Today in digital I think the best brands are Fujifilm, Leica and Ricoh for Street Photography. I owned and worked with cameras produded by these brands and I think to know what I am talking about. There are several solutions and I am not going to make a list because the market changes constantly and I don’t want to have a post that after a little bit of time seems to be old.

Usually the rangefinder style cameras are the ones fitting better the needs of a street photographer.

A Street Photographer shouldn’t forget to work also with film cameras. And if you are a guy who hasn't lived through the analogue era, I recommend you to give a try. I know…film is more and more expensive, and it can lead to frustration that are not in digital cameras, but I still consider film photography the best school for you as a photographer. Today we can have fantastic cameras for a few dollars.

My Gear

What I am currently using for my work? I shoot both, digital and film cameras. In digital my choice is Fujifilm X Series cameras. I use also manual lenses with my cameras.

I am working with a Fujifilm XPro2 and a Fujifilm XT10. As you can realize these are not the newest cameras on the market. If they are not special occasions such as being on the street all day, for example when I am engaged in one of my workshops, I carry a camera with a lens with me. I don't really need anything else. Unless I have a roll of film on one of my analog cameras, this is my way to go.

My film cameras are a Yashica Electro 35 GSN, a fantastic rangefinder. An Olympus Stylus Epic and a Nikon L35 AF.

It is perfectly fine to love our cameras, but without being gear addicted. Choose the cameras fitting with your approach and the ones allowing to work at the best for the results that you want to achieve.