Hi Everyone! Hope you're having a great week! Me? Can't complain. It's cold outside so I'm writing some blogs trying to get ahead. This blog is part 2 of the Street Photography Gear series and we are going to talk about lenses. To me lenses are the  most important part of a kit. A good lens can last for decades and can have a unique look to it. For street photography a good lens should be sharp fast to focus and small with a reasonably wide aperture. It's hard to find a lens that has all of those capabilities and one must compromise. 

Focal Length. Street photography is shot fairly close so wider focal lengths are used as compared to Wildlife photography where long telephoto lenses are what is primarily used.  Subjects are fairly close to across the street being the furtherest you will usually have to shoot. So from widest say 16mm to longest 85mm. The sweet spot for most photographers is either 35mm or 50mm range. Environmental Portraits may be shot at say 20-24mm and indoors let's say 16-35mm. For me I like to shoot 28mm to about 50 at the longest.  I do rarely shoot at longer than 50 and sometimes wider than 28 .  Like with all street gear the smaller is the better so long telephoto lenses say like a 70-200mm are not usually used for street photography.

Zooms vs Primes. This war has been going on for ages. Do I use a zoom like a 24-70mm which will cover all of my focal lengths or do I use a single prime and zoom with my feet? For me it comes to size again. A 24-70 will cover most of your focal lengths but it will also be heavy and intimidating for street portraits. A smaller camera/lens combo would be better. Whereas a 35mm or a 50mm will be lighter and be so small that it won't intimidate most people like a larger lens would. You could go either way. And I have. Sometimes I feel just like caring a 28-60mm that I have with just a camera strap and no bag and just walk around. Other times a 50mm and a 20mm primes will cover what ever I need and are smaller and compact with a small camera bag. It also depends on the light. Darker scenes I tend to go with primes because they usually have wider apertures than zooms and let in more light. So no wrong answer It just depends.

Apertures. As I said before smaller size lens is better for street photography because you are carrying everything. Generally speaking wider apertures mean larger lenses. Especially in Zooms. If you have a f/2.8 24-70 lens and the same lens at f/4 the f/2.8 maximum aperture lens will be much heaver. In primes if you go wider than f1.8 they start to get bigger. Generally speaking a wide aperture lens is great for street photography especially at night when it's darker. Most of street photography is done hand held so getting as much light in and keeping the shutter speed up will keep sharper photos. But if you're shooting during the day it's not as necessary a f/4 lens will work just fine. In my kit when I shoot street I'll take a zoom 28-60mm f/4 during the day and have a f/1.8 prime for when the light isn't as good. With newer cameras that can shoot at high ISO's now a days wide open apertures aren't as important. If you are going to shoot say car trails with a tripod they are not inportant. Or a nighttime city scape on a tripod not as important. So it depends on what you're shooting.

In summary you can see it really doesn't matter what kind of lens you have for street photography . The focal length will be from say wide 16mm to normal-ish 85mm on the long size. Primes and Zooms both work well. You probably already have lenses in your kit that will work. So 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