What's up Ya'll! Me? I'm doing great! Hope you are! This week is the start of another series. This is Street Photography Gear .  This is the first part of a 3 part series on gear for street photography and photo walks . The gear I’m going to talk about today is the Camera or Camera body to use.  In street photography and doing photo walks the size of the gear is more important than the brand name of the gear. Now street photography can be taken with almost any type of camera from your phone to the most fancy Mirrorless camera. Street photography has been around since the beginning of photography itself so lots of different cameras from film to digital has and can be used. In street photography and photo walks size is very important for a couple of reasons. The first reason is weight. When doing street photography you are usually on foot walking everywhere you go. So the size and weight of the gear is very important. You want to be as light as possible. The second reason is to be inconspicuous when you are shooting and walking around. You don’t want to be the center of attention when your walking around. You don’t want to be intimidating to the subjects you are photographing .  These are the two reasons that lightweight small gear is wanted. So there are so many types of cameras so I will break them down in a couple of categories. First one is small point and shoot.

Digital Point and shoot Cameras. Point and shoot cameras are great because they are all one piece. No lenses to mess with just the camera. I consider your mobile phone as a point and shoot but not my first choice as a street photography camera but they work great in a pinch and are wonderful if the lighting conditions are bad because of the computational photography program algorithms built into the device. Point and shoots with zooms are great also because they are very versatile with the zooms. I have a little Canon G7XII point and shoot that I love. Point and shoots with fixed focal length lenses work well too because they take all of the decision making out and you just have to frame and shoot. Some of the most popular point and shoots fall in this category . The Fujifilm X100 cameras . The Fujifilm X100 VI is the latest version of this camera and it comes with a 35 full frame equivalent lens on it. Just made for street photography. All of these cameras are small and lightweight and can fit in your pocket for concealment .

Digital Interchangeable lens Cameras. These can be either DSLR cameras or Mirrorless cameras. They can be either rangefinder shaped or traditional SLR shaped. The key here is as above smaller is better but any will work. As with all of these camera's if I haven't mentioned it before the sensor size doesn't really matter. Can be full frame , crop or Mircro 4/3rds or even smaller. Generally speaking the smaller the sensor the smaller the lens and lighter the kit and extra lenses. Any brand will do but some of the big names are Leica, Fujifilm, Nikon, Canon and Sony and let's not forget Olympus and Panasonic. All these brands and if I've missed one produce photographs that are of great quality. The main point here is to be light as possible and really be familiar with your camera and make sure you have enough batteries to keep your camera going for hours. This big advantages of these camera's is the versatility. The ability to change lenses at will from lets say a fast prime lens to a Zoom lens with many focal lengths built in. Choose your lenses carefully and don't carry too many of them. I would say two at max one on the camera and a spare. Any more than that you will be changing lenses more than taking photographs.

Film Camera's. All modern cameras have been influenced by the older film camera's. The most famous street photographers all used film and cameras carried. Leica being the king with the M series of cameras. But other manufacturers work well too. Small is still the king here. Small rangefinder like Leica, Canon, Nikon to larger like Rolleiflex medium formate twin lens cameras. Being a master at film is a must if your shooting film because film doesn't have the dynamic range of digital and care and correct metering is a must. Most if not all of these camera's are manual focusing and zone focusing system might be very handy for quick shooting. There are interchangeable lens cameras and point and shoot with fixed lenses. My main film street camera is a Canon Canonet QL17 said to be the "Poor mans Leica" . It's a rangefinder 35mm point and shoot with a fixed 40mm f/1.7 lens and a leaf shutter for silent shooting. Shooting with these camera's requires much skill but if your into film it can be quite fun.

In summary it doesn't really matter what camera you use for street but smaller is better and less is more. Being able to handle it with ease is probably more important than what camera you have. You probably already have a camera that is perfect for street photography. Until next week get out and shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 post there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link