City and street photo equipment choices depend on what you want to photograph, how you approach subjects, and how you want to share your photos and videos.
Smartphone cameras can take snapshots in relatively dim lighting and are the most convenient camera to use when you want to share your images.
An up-to-date smartphone has the ability to produce photos with high enough resolution for printing and videos that can look good on a widescreen TV set.
Smartphones can be the best choice when you want to share your images and videos directly as most allow direct uploading to social media sites and can automatically re-size and re-configure your files for optimal viewing. Other cameras almost always require you to upload files via a smartphone interface.
General tips
The best equipment to use is usually light, portable and easy to configure and operate. When you’re wandering through a city the last thing you need is heavy equipment weighing you down. Large cameras and lenses also attract attention wherever, whereas a good street camera lets you slip through crowds without being noticed.
Interchangeable-lens cameras are much more versatile and usually deliver better image quality than smartphones. There are plenty of cameras and lenses to choose from and you can tailor your equipment choices to suit different situations.
To photograph people – particularly for candid shots – your camera needs fast and accurate autofocusing, ideally aided by reliable subject recognition that you can set to target subjects’ eyes. A reasonably fast (up to 10 fps) continuous shooting mode can help capture spontaneous ‘decisive moments’ – but it’s not fail-safe and your camera requires an adequate buffer memory for storing files.
You’ll need a camera with fast and accurate focusing – and, ideally, subject recognition – to capture action shots in busy urban environments.
Cameras with pre-recording capabilities that start to capture a burst of frames as soon as the shutter button is half-pressed can be helpful in some situations. Look for the Pre-burst, Pre-Shot, Pro-Capture and Pre-Release modes in an increasing number of interchangeable-lens cameras. But be aware that, like continuous shooting modes, they aren’t always fail-proof.
Always choose a camera with accessible controls – and learn to use them intuitively. You don’t want to waste precious moments hunting through menus. Quick menu buttons and programmable functions can save you time in many situations.
A smartphone can be the best choice for ‘ambience’ shots because it’s inconspicuous and includes sophisticated image processing that delivers good results in a wide variety of situations.
Small cameras and smartphones are great for photographing buildings and taking scenic ‘ambience’ shots revealing the ‘atmosphere’ in the area at specific times. You’ll need a fast wide-angle lens to cover such situations; fast for when you’re working in low ambient light and tricky lighting situations and wide-angle to fit structures in the frame.
Lens choices
Choosing lenses is, therefore, a matter of balancing your wants and needs against your ability to carry the gear, how conspicuous it is, and the money you’re prepared to invest. See a wide range of lens reviews on www.PhotoReview.com.au.
You can do a lot with an interchangeable-lens camera with a bundled (‘kit’) zoom lens that typically spans a moderately-wide to short telephoto zoom range from about 28mm to 75mm in 35mm equivalence. However, kit zooms are often rather ‘slow’, which can restrict your capabilities in dim lighting and you may miss shots in fast-moving urban situations. A longer lens – like a 24-105mm zoom – extends your reach in both the wide and telephoto directions for photographing streetscapes, buildings and candid portraits.
Zoom lenses give you flexibility to shoot from different distances and allow you to be relatively inconspicuous. This shot was taken with the 300mm focal length setting on a 50-300mm zoom lens using an aperture of f/7.1 to blur out the background.
Longer lenses are almost always larger and heavier – although some compromises can be found if you sacrifice lens speed. Lens speed won’t matter as much if you shoot mainly in normal daylight – and you can always boost the ISO to compensate if you’re using a modern camera.
Faster lenses are larger and heavier because they require internal elements with larger diameters in order to let in more light. Larger elements also cost more to produce.
Some street photographers prefer using prime lenses – usually with focal lengths equivalent to 35mm or 50mm on a ‘full-frame’ camera. Prime lenses are often smaller, faster and cheaper than equivalent zoom lenses and may also deliver better image quality overall.
Many street photographers prefer using prime lenses, in this case a fast 35mm f/2 lens, for the superior image quality they can provide in challenging lighting.
But they have limitations: you may miss out on photo opportunities when the subject isn’t in range. With practice, you learn to see the world as your lens sees it and become accustomed to its perspective. As a result, you’re able to position yourself and your camera instinctively whenever a good opportunity arises.
There are several ways to overcome the limitations of a prime lens. When the lens isn’t long enough, you can crop the frame to bring the subject into prominence – provided your camera’s resolution is high enough and your subject isn’t too small in the frame. How much the frame can be cropped depends upon how you plan to share the image.
This night shot was created by stitching together three frames taken with a 70mm equivalent lens to cover the San Francisco docklands.
Alternatively, if the lens isn’t wide enough you can always take a series of frames to encompass the site as a panorama. You need to allow for angular distortions, correcting them as much as possible when the shots are captured and when they’re stitched together. Holding the camera vertically (‘portrait format’) can help keep distortions controllable but this requires you to take more shots.
What to leave at home
When you’re photographing in cities, anything that prevents you from moving around – and changing your shooting angles quickly – can get in the way. You also get more interesting shots if you don’t draw attention to yourself, particularly when you’re photographing people (although interested and well-meaning strangers can sometimes approach you for a chat if they see you taking pictures).
Unless you’ve planned your shoots for night time you won’t need a tripod. In that case, check with the local authorities to see whether you need permission. In busy city streets during daytime tripods simply get in people’s way and may lead to you being asked by police to move on.
It would be unreasonable to set up a tripod in an area with busy street traffic like this – and you wouldn’t get this kind of shot since you would attract the attention of passers-by.
The other thing you don’t need is a flash. Turn off your camera’s built-in flash and leave the external flashgun at home. The light from a flash draws attention to you and likely spoils your chances of getting good shots until the people around you move on. Also be aware that the light from a typical built-in flash rarely reaches much beyond a metre or so from the camera, so it’s rarely worthwhile.
A burst of light from a flashgun would attract attention – and you would miss out on informal shots like this.
Tilt/shift lenses
Tilt/shift lenses have mechanisms that can change the position or orientation of the lens with respect to the image sensor. They are normally used by professional architectural photographers (and those who photograph products for advertisements) to control the perspective in a scene.
Tilt movements shift the lens forward and back on a vertical plane and can be used to adjust the plane of focus. Shift movements move the lens up and down and are used to adjust the position of the subject in the image area. They can be used to prevent parallel lines – like the edges of a building – from converging when the camera is tilted upwards.
Tilt/shift lenses are normally used for correcting distortions due to the orientation of the lens with respect to a tall building.
Unless you want to specialise in architectural or product photography, investing in a tilt/shift lens is seldom worthwhile. Some cameras include ‘keystone’ correction modes that can replicate some of the functions of a tilt/shift lens while, for those that don’t, most raw file converters come with optical corrections for adjusting vertical convergence.
Useful links
This article by Margaret Brown is an excerpt from City & Street Photography – click here to order print or ebook edition.
Pocket guide Partner: Camera House
