Digital Cameras for Street Photography: An Opinionated Guide

Some things to consider when looking for a street camera:

Autofocus isn’t fast enough. Some street photographers’ style is to prowl the streets and when they see something, they stop, focus, compose, and shoot. For their multi-step process, Autofocus is useful. Others approach street photography in the unstructured, reflex-dependent Winogrand-style “walk-and-shoot” approach, which is too fast for autofocus. Being able to quickly and accurately anticipate and set focus in advance of the shot is essential, because aiming the camera at a fast moving subject and waiting for focus to lock in, even if it takes a quarter of a second, makes it obvious that you’re taking a picture, and can ruin the moment. Therefore, a good street camera should make it easy to manually focus quickly and accurately, even before you bring the camera to your eye.

A loud shutter will spook the people in the picture. If the camera makes a loud “click” when you shoot, that’s it, you may have lost the opportunity to take a second shot because the sound will get peoples’ attention. Therefore, the shutter should be silent or at least very quiet.

Street photography is too fast for slow buffers. You need to be able to shoot many shots very quickly. I’m not talking about a burst rate; I’m talking about buffer refresh rates. An image may evolve in front of you slowly, or change dramatically in a split second. If you’ve taken a shot then a split second later it gets even better, you should be able to take that picture. The camera that hesitates is lost. Therefore, the camera’s buffer capacity should be big enough so that you can continue shooting while the previous image is being transferred, with no hesitation (assuming you’re using the fastest memory card available).

Intuitive operation of exposure controls is essential. Autoexposure can slow a camera down; good street shooters should be able to calculate the correct exposure in their heads (if you can’t do this yet, practice!). I change exposure settings as I cross the street, or if I turn from front-lit to back-lit subjects, and I don’t want to have to bother with scrolling through menus or stare at LCD monitors to make sure my settings are accurate. Therefore, a camera should have physical dials or rings that put all the shutter speeds and apertures at your fingertips.

We need (shutter) speed: I’m talking about fast shutter speeds and reasonable image quality at higher ISOs. When shooting in New York, I generally shoot on the street at ISO 800, and pump it up to 1600 on heavy overcast days. Most APS sensor cameras can easily handle this range with no noticeable noise; Micro Four Thirds sensors can handle ISO 800 but 1600 may be pushing it. Smaller sensor cameras might give you OK quality up to ISO 400. Add a stop if you’re converting your images to black-and-white since (in my opinion) digital noise doesn’t look as objectionable when turned to monochrome.

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