The difficulty of a lens like the one I am using for my Street Photography
You already know that I am using the 7Artisans 25mm f1.8 for my street photographs. And that will be until i sell the camera.
On Amazon a user of the lens says:
For a wide angle shot, i usually want to focus at infinity and this lens has the key flaw of having an innacurate focus ring. To focus at infinity you need to finesse the ring anywhere from 1-3mm on either side of the infinity marker. This is too inconsistent for me to rely on in the field when I’m trying to take night sky or landscape shots on vacation.
Based on my experience, using the lens for almost a year I can say:
If you are a photographer who needs to feel confident about the result in every moment, avoid this lens, it's not for you. Because the experience can be really frustrating. We talk about a clickless ring that is also inaccurate, this necessarily exposes you to error. However, if you have seen the work done by me you can also be enthusiastic. I was really fed up with the plastic proposed by the camera brand and my decision has been extreme: for street photography I have only this lens for this camera, because I sold also the 18mm (total plastic).
Why I made this choice? As a photographer, my priority is to obtain an organic result, as similar as possible to film, and above all consistent. The lens is presented in this way in marketing introductions: The 25mm f1.8 lens has the closest focusing distance of 0.18m. It can shoot food, small objects, flowers, product details and other subjects.
And so we can understand why it has a more noticeable tendency to bokeh even when, in theory, it shouldn't. We have to consider that we talk about an equivalent 37.5 mm lens and this makes even more complicated to work with the zone focusing on the street: one point in my favor and one less for the lens. I can assure you that if you learn to work with this lens, nothing more can scare you in photography.
To decrease the error in the street I have to think according to this lens: for far subjects I set always to infinity, while for my way to photograph usually I set the distance ring to 3m, Between 5m and 3m is the distance I usually work, while the aperture ring in the street I usually move it between f11 and f16, when I am in places of total shade I can switch to f8, but take in account that I use tio work with Auto ISO ranging from 400 to 12800.
The increased difficulties are therefore for a street photographer:
A not very wide angle lens
an inaccurate focus ring
Being designed to create a noticeable bokeh makes the work on the street even more challenging
I use the camera total manual except Auto ISO
Why do I keep using it you may be wondering… the results that I obatin are very organic, and all the experience is pretty similar to use a film rangefinder camera. This is what I love, even though I started getting tired. Maybe I'm getting old, but I want to get back to working with compact cameras. I want to be more free while photographing and not have to constantly change settings. And I want a camera where I can count with something producing sharper images. With this combo I can also get very sharp images, but sometimes the sharpness is selective due to the focal range. I want back to a 28mm lens for my street photography. And I have already decided that Ricoh GR is the camera that I want. This is the reason why I am selling the camera and the entire system.
As I have managed to do a valuable work with this system, I am convinced that another photographer can do it. The street edition combo that I own is available on the shop of this website. It is also out for sell on MercadoLibre.
If you are interested to buy my camera, please take a look:
