Hey Ya'll! Hope your week is going well. This week it has been chilly outside and I've spent the time writing blogs. This week's blog is the third installment of the Street Photography Gear series. This week we will discuss bags and accessories for street photography. This will be the last in the series about street photography gear. As you know I have an obsession about camera bags. I have gone through many of them and right now I have settled on a few that I will discuss. 

Bags. There are many different ways to carry gear when doing street photography and as I have said in past blogs about street smaller is better. Let's start with the smallest and work our way up. First of all you can go with one camera and one lens and just use a strap to carry your kit with. This is a great way to go if you only have one lens. Next if your camera kit is small enough a fanny pack or a small sling bag can carry a point and shoot and a item or two. I often use a fanny pack even if I have another bag. I like to carry my wallet and phone and keys there to be handy and not pulling at my pants all of the time and slows down the pick pockets. The next size is a sling bag. I love a good sling bag one that is big enough to carry a filter and extra lens maybe even a water bottle. I have one that I have made out of a large lumbar bag (fanny pack) and a camera insert. I call it my purse and like a ladies purse it has all sorts of things in it . From snacks , chap stick, and first aid kit. LOL  The last one I will talk about is a small backpack. It can be designed to be a camera bag although I like the plain ones with a camera insert in them. They blend in with the environment and don't scream I have a 1000 dollar camera inside. They are great for walking around all day and have room for a jacket if it gets hot after a chilly morning. It has room for storing souvenirs without carrying around shopping bags. I have one that is very comfortable and can pull the insert out of my purse and put into the backpack. All but the backpack have easy access but I usually have a Peak Design camera clip on the strap of the backpack and can clip my camera to so I have hands free operation. The main thing with all these types of bags is to be comfortable.

Accessories. Things that a street photographer can use but are not necessary. Tripod, a tripod isn't necessary unless you are shooting at night to shoot car trails or night landscapes. I would suggest a small travel one so you're not carrying a big tripod. Sometimes instead of a tripod if you are trying to show motion is a parking meter or park bench to set your camera on. Filters can become handy like a polarizer. I always have a polarizer on hand just incase I need to knock out some glare or reflection of something.  Maybe a haze or mist filter to give some ambiance to a shot. But filters aren't really a street thing. Then there are all kinds of other accessories that you would have with any other form of photography from light meters, SD card wallets, cleaning stuff and even rain gear for your camera. All of these are optional and personal to you what you think you will need. The bottom line is don't bring the kitchen sink smaller is better and less is more.

There is nothing more that I like is taking a stroll through a town that I haven't been before and having the appropriate kit can make the experience enjoyable and fun. If you bring too much you will feel like a pack mule and you won't enjoy yourself as much. But keeping your kit dry, safe and clean is a must to protect the investment you made on your gear. 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

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

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