The MetroCommuters waiting for the Metro in Washington DC. Hey Everybody! I hope this day finds you well and Happy!  Today's subject on what lens is best for street photography is one that I'm struggling with myself.  First I'll start with a disclaimer that I am not a street photographer but very envious of the ones I see on YouTube or have studied. This will just be my thoughts on the subject and I welcome you to comment and give me your thoughts on the subject.  Now all of that said I'd like to let you know my setup.  Normally for all of my landscape and travel photography I use a crop sensor camera and 3 zooms that will take me from 15mm to 525mm relative focal length to full frame.  So why don't I use this set up.  First when I think of street photography I think of dark corners of some city and using bokeh (blurring of the background) to separate a subject from the chaos of a busy street scene.  A crop or small sensor is not best for this I think of a full frame sensor will best suit this.  So I use a full frame camera.  Its an older one that is smallish and lightweight and has sensor stabilization. Stabilization is one of my must in any camera I'm getting older and a steady hand is not always available. LOL. And when I think of Bokeh I think of prime lenses.  These lenses are usually small, lightweight and not as  _MSP2682 intimidating to someone as a large zoom would be. Of course a zoom lens would pretty much solve the problem of what lens for street you could carry a 24-70mm and it would cover the range that you need but to get good bokeh you would need a maximum aperture of 2.8.  A full frame 2.8 lens is large and heavy two things that I don't want to mess with. I think that maximum aperture of 1.8 is the sweet spot for bokeh and not being too heavy of a lens.  You can get larger apertures of 1.4 or even 1.2 but these are very expensive and large and heavy.  So I have a full frame camera and 4 prime lenses to go with it.  I know , I know 4 lenses isn't that heavy? Actually the 4 lenses I have if I decide to carry all of them would be lighter than a 24-70 f2.8 lens would be and I only plan on taking 2 of them at any given time one long and one wide and let my feet make up the distance in-between. So let me take you though the lenses I  have.

24mm f1.8-  This is my widest of the Prime lenses I have.  It is great for tight places where I'm really up close to my subject. I imagine a busy market in some Asian country where your elbow to elbow.  Let's face it I'm probably not going to see this again although I have been there in my younger years in the service. But I recently took this lens to a Eastern MarketEastern Market in Washington DC, A good place to photograph. transportation museum and I ended up using this lens more than any other of my lenses because it gave me perspective of everything in the scene.  It worked out great.

35mm f1.8- This lens is a little tighter and is probably the most popular for street photography.  I think this is great for normal ordinary streets and for street portraits and environmental portraits where you have the subject and what they are doing in the same scene.  This is a fantastic lens and would be a great choice for anyone.

55mm f1.8- This is almost like the 35mm but a little tighter and great for street portraits.  You can never go wrong with a 50ish lens.  35mm and 50mm is considered the normal focal length as how we see as humans.

85mm f1.8 - Probably the least used but really great as a small telephoto length lens it can compress the scene and draw your subject closer to the background.  This lens is the smoothest of my lenses.  When it take photo's its like butter!  Thats the only way I know how to explain it. I really love this lens.

So which lens is the best for street.  Well your not going to like my answer. It depends.  I think it depends on the situation you're in.  And how you see things.  We are all individuals and we see things different.  Maybe you like to look at things wide with everything in the photo or maybe you Isolate subjects and like to see only one thing without any clutter.  I think to truly know what lens to use takes a lot of shooting with different focal lengths , so much that when you see a scene you can see what it would look like without the camera.  You see in 24mm or 35mm or whatever focal length.  Then you minds eye will let you know what lens is best for the situation you're in.  Shooting in Seatle would be different than shooting in New York or Chicago. Or your local city or town.  This is where I'm at at street photography.  Learning how my lenses see the scene and then deciding which ones to take with me.

So there is my answer or at least my thoughts on the subject.  I hope this helps.  So until next week get out and shoot!

Filters Hey Everyone! I hope ya'll are doing fine this week.  This week I'm going to talk about filters and how I use them.  I wrote a blog in 2015 and my setup has changed so I thought I would update it.  Back then I was using a full frame camera and all of the big lenses that go with it and my filters had to match the size. I was using a Lee filter system the 100mm square filters.  And they worked great I liked everything about the system.  But when I switched to mirrorless crop sensor camera's  the filter's were just too big.  I mean the filter kit almost weighed more than my camera did.  I did get adapter rings so I could use the filters but it was pretty silly with the so large filters on front of my camera and the size to carry them was just too much.  So I still have them they just take up a portion of my Pelican camera case I keep all of my stuff in at home. LOL  So there were certain filters I had to have right away and as you may know I think that the polarizer filter is the most important filter in your bag.  So I started getting screw on type filters for my different lenses for this purpose.  They ended up being a mixed match of filters.  I had some B&W to HOYA to all sorts of brands.  So these were Okay for my everyday walk around and polarize something.  But I wanted something more consistent for when I was shooting on a tripod.  Serious work!  For some reason I think its serious when I pull out my tripod.  Anyway, I wanted something that was lightweight,  something that wouldn't break the bank and something that I could have all of the ND filters I needed.  Now do I get screw on or ones like I used to have but smaller? I decided to go with the screw on type for a couple of reasons.  Size is one reason.  With the square ones you need a holder for them and thus this took up more space.  With one holder  you needed adapter rings to fit the holder then to fit your lens filter size for each lens that you had different.  That was more cost for special adapter rings to fit your holder and the lenses you have. So cost and size came into play and one more item came into play. Durability.  The square filters are great but if you get really good ones they are made out of glass and can break.  I had gone through a couple of filters with my Lee set because I dropped them.  Now no filter needs to be dropped but if your around a water fall everything gets a little wet and wet glass is slippery.  I think I have gone through a couple of polarizers in the past because of dropping.  The screw on filters are a little more sturdy.  By no means am I suggesting that you should drop them but they are more shock resistant than that of the square ones.  So Screw ones were the winner.  Now which brand?

Now there are many great filters out there and I don't have the means to buy one of each and try them out.  I had tried a few brands of Lee Filter Holder polarizers but that was about the extent of it.  So I did what I always do and went to Youtube to try to find the answer.  I went to all of the big names trying to come up with an answer and the most popular filters among my Youtube hero's were Breakthrough Photography.  So I got a polarizer from them in the largest lens thread size that I had at the time witch was 72mm. I decided that I could get that size and buy inexpensive step down rings (you can get a whole set for 20-30 bucks) and just step down to my smaller lenses.  I slowly accumulated a 3 stop ND filter then I got a 6 stop one and finally a 10 stop ND.  So now I have a set of 4 breakthrough photography filters.  I bought a small case that will hold all 4 of them and the adapter rings I may have.  I keep these in the side pouch of my Shimado Action X camera bag and they are lightweight and out of the way until I need them.

I think filters are a very important part of photography.  It helps spur on the creative juices especially when it comes to long shutter drag photo's. Polarizers can do what nothing can do post processing .  Taking the sheen or reflection off of objects or water so you can see to the bottom of the lake or turn the sky blue.  So what filters do you use?  Until next week get outside and keep shooting.

Hey Everyone! Hope everyone is doing great today! This week I wanted to talk about the act of capturing your image. What we do.  And how we adjust to changing conditions. Its called troubleshooting or problem solving.  In real life that's what I do every day.  I go to a site and try to figure out what is happening with the customers system.  It is a constant of my work.  Always troubleshooting.  Finding out what is wrong and trying to find a way to fix it.  Well in photography its the same thing. We look at a scene and have the picture in our minds eye of how it should look.  We bring up our camera and  "snap" we look at the photo or "chimp" and it doesn't look like what was in our minds eye.  Why is that?  Well our camera's just aren't as smart as our minds eye.  No matter how fancy or advanced your camera is and all of the gear you have the first shot is never what your minds eye sees.  So then you have to say to yourself what's not right.  And the troubleshooting begins.  But what I think is the better troubleshooter you are the better photographer you are.  And this like many things will come with time and experience.  And the more you shoot and know your equipment (oops there it is again me talking about knowing your equipment) the better photographer and quality images you will produce.

What makes a good problem solver?  Well that's hard to say.  Do you know how some people are great organizers and some are great with Stupid Lights mechanical things and some people can plan great trips.  I think troubleshooting is one of those things that is a part of your personality.  Maybe not something your born with but something you grow into.  Being able to troubleshoot something you first must know how that something works or in our case is suppose to look like.  Then its just figuring out what is right with it and what is wrong with it.  For example maybe your taking a photo of a dark scene and you have your camera on some automatic setting.  Well your camera is going to try to put the scene at 18% gray witch will brighten up your scene in camera so you would have to be smarter than your camera and make adjustments to make it look like its suppose to.  Maybe you want to take a photo of a person riding a bicycle  with the person in focus and the background blurred .   The first shot you took everything was blurred.  So you figured out that you need to pan with the rider to keep them sharp but let the background blur.  The whole art of photography is troubleshooting.

Editing your photo's.  Editing photo's for the most part is subjective.  What I think is properly exposed may be under exposed to someone else. So you have to compare what you have to what your minds eye sees.  Do I need to brighten up the scene.  Do I need to get rid of some spots.  Do I need to increase this or that to make the photo look like what's in my minds eye.  When your done you should have what you saw in your minds eye.  This is the art part of photography. Taking what is in your minds eye and making it come to life. Just like a painter would.  The painter may look at a scene for hours before picking up a paint brush and start painting what is in his minds eye.  We as photographers can do the same thing looking at a scene and then seeing it in your minds eye of how you saw it.  We take the photo and then get it into editing and the finial product should be what your minds eye saw just like the painter.

Well I hope I have made a little sense about what I think we as photographers always Troubleshoot.  So until next week get outside and shoot!