The Challenge of Street Photography
Street photography reminds me of wildlife photography, but instead of capturing wild animals in their natural state in the savanna you are capturing humans in their natural state in urban environments. This is not a photography form I specialize in (feel free to criticize my street photography attempts as horrible), but I enjoy dabbling in it when I have some free time in the right type of environment. And there isn’t a better environment than midtown Manhattan. In this post, I’ll share some of my limited insight into street photography, including my gear, settings and workflow.
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Some people are offended by street photography. There is something invasive and intrusive about it. To be clear, in the United States, there is no right to privacy in public places. As a photographer, my First Amendment rights let me photograph total strangers and ,with very few limitations, do whatever I want with those images. (There are some limitations preventing certain types of commercial use). To my knowledge, other countries including Europe are less friendly to “street photography.”
While I’m safely within my rights to practice street photography, it can still be a touchy subject. It’s fair to say that most people really don’t want total strangers snapping photos of them, and some people may not even believe you have the right to do so. As to people who really don’t mind you taking their photo, they may still behave differently if they know a camera is pointed at them. Thus, these factors really encourage a photographer to be as discreet as possible.
Being discreet draws many challenges in itself. If you have a big dSLR glued to your face, looking right at your subject, you greatly increase the chances that your subject will notice you taking their photo. Shooting a small camera and shooting from the hip are ways to become much more discreet.
Additionally, street photography brings its own technical challenges. You are shooting in dynamic environments, you may be moving, your subject may be moving. You have little control over light. As a result, be prepared for needing to often resort to high ISO, in order to keep up an adequate shutter speed and adequate depth of field. Be prepared for significant exposure correction of raw files to fix harsh lighting or bad shadows.
How I Typically Shoot Street Photography
In order to be discreet, I rarely will use the viewfinder when shooting street photography. Instead, I’m shooting from the hip. Often I’m using the LCD to compose my shots. Sometimes, to maximize discretion, I am just pointing the camera in the general direction of an interesting scene, and shooting short bursts of images. It’s the only time I use “spray and pray” — Shoot a whole bunch of images, and hope to get something good. In these cases, I’m relying on truly automatic autofocus to hopefully grab the right subject, often aided by a good face detect system. (If I’m able to take more time to set up my shot, then I’ll use single point AF and compose more thoughtfully).
Most often, I’ll use shutter speeds around 1/250 to 1/500 to freeze the action, as both my subject and I may be moving, as in the above image where we were moving towards each other. I’ll also stop down the aperture enough to have a fair amount of depth of field. While I may want some background separation, these are typically meant to be environmental shots, and therefore I don’t want super narrow depth of field. Furthermore, a bit more depth of field provides a bit more flexibility if I can’t be as precise with nailing the focus point.
I shoot with somewhat wide to normal angles (24mm to 55mm) for a few reasons. I’m fairly close to the action so there isn’t enough space to back up. Often, I want environment to be part of the images. With wider angles, I can get a decent depth of field while still using a fairly large aperture.
Why I love Sony Cameras for Street Photography
For the last several years, Sony has largely led the pack in shrinking the size of high performing cameras. Certainly, Sony cameras aren’t the only cameras capable of good street photography but they have many high performing cameras across many lines that are capable of being very discreet. Much of my earliest street photography was done with the Sony RX100:
The 1″ sensor of the RX100 line outperforms typical point and shoots, without being larger than a point and shoot. This allows for maximum discretion while still getting half-decent image quality as moderately high ISO’s. Over the various models, the focal length range of the RX100 has ranged from 24mm to 200mm, which is an ideal range for street photography. It’s better to try to get close to your subjects and you don’t often have the room to back up for long telephoto. The newer models of the Sony RX100 have fantastic phase detect AF systems and fast burst rates. (My thoughts on the Sony RX100 models)
It’s the Sony mirrorless cameras though that really become fantastic street photography cameras. Critically, all of the current models offer the following advantages for street photography:
- Fast Live View Continuous Autofocus, no need to rely on viewfinder
- Autofocus coverage over most of the frame, no need to center your subject or focus and re-compose
- Face detect/ Eye-AF. Even where I’m shooting from the hip blindly, I can rely on the camera to at least focus on a face
- Class leading dynamic range, especially in full frame, allowing significant exposure and shadow correction in post processing
I’ll often take the Sony A6300 with me when I might get the chance to casually do some street photography. The small size adds to the ability to be discreet:
Full frame Sony mirrorless really brings home the potential for street photography. I can shoot at higher ISO without fear as in this example at ISO 2000.
The current generation of Sony full frame mirrorless bring some tremendous advantages for street photography. Beyond extraordinary autofocus systems, the Sony A9, Sony A7iii and Sony A7riii offer fast burst shooting with silent shutter. Shooting a short fast burst allows capture of great micro-expressions since you can’t tell your subject to pose and smile.
Silent shutter allows me to take images even fairly close in without being noticed by the subject:
While I find that the high resolution of the Sony A7riii often isn’t necessary, it becomes very helpful in street photography. To keep the size of the kit down (for discretion and portability), as well as for simplicity, I’ll shoot with a prime lens. But I can’t always zoom in and out with my feet as I only have an instant to capture an interesting scene. 42 megapixels of the Sony A7riii means I can crop significantly and still get a very sharp image.
Take a look at these images to see the original composition and the significantly cropped result:
Caveats About Using the Sony System for Street shooting
As I’ve been saying, Sony’s newest mirrorless cameras have capabilities and features that make the cameras really stand out for street photography. But there are some limitations to consider as well.
While it shouldn’t be an issue with the Sony A9, the Sony A7riii silent shutter is far from perfect. If you have any artificial light, you really need to look for banding as in this example, where you will really notice the banding on her legs.
Even when in natural light, one has to watch for rolling shutter distortions. Have you ever seen a crooked bus? Look below.
Thus, while I find the silent shutter very valuable on the Sony A7iii and Sony A7riii when doing street photography, if there is enough ambient noise, your shutter sound likely won’t be noticed anyway. May be best to save the silent shutter for when you really need it.
Secondly, when shooting landscape compositions, the tilting LCD is very helpful on Sony mirrorless cameras, letting you shoot comfortably from the hip and still compose on the LCD. Unfortunately, the angle of the tilt is entirely useless if you are doing any portrait (vertical) compositions. A fully articulating LCD would certainly be nice.
Recommended Sony Gear for Street Photography
Starting with Cameras:
Sony RX100 V for maximum portability, great performance that you can virtually slip into your pocket.
Sony A6300 or Sony A6500, maximizing performance while still keeping the camera small and nimble.
Sony A7riii — My personal choice, maximum IQ, ability to correct exposure, silent shutter at 10 fps, and lots of cropping latitude.
Sony A9 — 20 frames per second with silent shutter, and with far fewer silent shutter detriments, should have far less banding and rolling shutter issues.
Sony A7iii — The “bargain.” Really all the same advantages of the A7riii but with less resolution, and the focus system of the A9. Really, the best all around camera you can buy from any brand in the price range today.
Lenses for Street Photography
As I mention above, I primarily shoot with primes when doing street photography. You certain can use zoom lenses, but such lenses invariably increase the bulk making you less nimble and less discreet. As zooms tend to be a bit less sharp than primes, you effectively lose the ability to crop to the same extremes. Finally, you lose some aperture.
My preference therefore comes down to prime lenses. All the lenses below are small and light, perfect for portability and discretion.
For APS-C: (Sony A6000/A6300/A6500), it means:
- Sony Zeiss 24mm F/1.8: I’ve used this lens. Bit overpriced and unfortunately lacking stabilization but wonderfully sharp and contrasty.
- Sony SEL 35mm F/1.8: My favorite walk-around lens for Sony APS-c shooting.
- Sony SEL 50mm F/1.8: Bit long for street shooting but can give you some great results. My review of the lens here.
For Full frame shooting:
- Zeiss Batis 25mm F/2: My review is coming soon. Needless to say, I love this lens. It can be a bit too wide but it’s incredibly sharp.
- Sony Zeiss 35mm F/2.8: Smallest and most portable prime for Sony. Great focal length for street photography.
- Sony FE 28mm F/2: This is the only lens on the list I haven’t personally used, but the size, aperture and focal length are right.
- Sony Zeiss 55mm F/1.8: In many ways, it’s the lens that defines the system. My review here.
My Street Photography Workflow
In terms of capturing images, I feel that street photography is a bit like fishing. You sit in the fishing boat all day, casting your pole for hours, waiting for a bite.
Unlike a great landscape, you can’t just go to a scenic spot. You can’t pose your subjects as you would with portraits. So personally, when I’m doing street photography, my goal is to stay out for a long period of time, looking for interesting character moments, taking lots and lots of images, in the hope of capturing a few good ones. If 10% of my captures are real keepers, I’m happy.
Like most enthusiasts, I start my post-processing in lightroom. Much of the heavy work is adjusting the shadows. I may use a radial filter to reduce the exposure around my subject, thus highlighting my subject. Most of my street photography shots require some degree of cropping and straightening. Amazing how hard it is to keep a straight horizon when you are shooting blindly from the hip!
You probably noticed that I convert most of my street photography to black and white, which seems pretty common with street photography. In my mind, converting to black and white is a way to simplify the image and focus on the story being told, instead of being overwhelmed by color. While one can certainly convert to black and white with Lightroom or any other software, I’m a huge fan of Nik Silver Efex Pro. Silver Efex Pro has fantastic B&W pre-sets, film emulations and ability to add color tones.
Thanks for Reading
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