What is your Fav Street camera/lens combo?

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Mine is the Sony A9 and 35mm f2.8 prime.

Its just absolutely perfect in everyway and the small footprint setup is sensational mixed with what i would say the best AF system in a camera ever and is fully silent with its special sensor tech on it.

Whats yours?
 
My Fuji X100F [emoji41]

Great sensor and lens in a perfectly small, silent, great looking (if that matters to you) camera. Fits right in my jacket pocket too.
 
2 choices depending on weather

1 - XT1 + 35mm f2 if inclement weather
2 - X-E1 + 25mm F1.8 if weather ok
 
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Olympus E M-10 with Panasonic 14mm f2.5 pancake lens
or
Olympus XA-2 for film
 
A Canon EOS 30 35mm SLR and either a 40mm pancake lens (for compact size and very handy focal length) or 28-135 EF IS, which is a 'one size fits all' lens for street. The eye-selectable focus points on the EOS 30 are really handy for picking out focal points - it's a case of just looking at the AF point to select it, which can be so handy for street/documentary style stuff. If shooting digital, a Canon 6D with 40mm pancake (or 24-105L if size doesn't matter). Both quite compact, light and quiet SLRs. with good metering systems.
 
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that viewfinder makes it poke a bit to be fair and still it is quite a comparable size to the fuji despite being a FF sensor :)

OK so its not got lightening fast AF, 20fps or Full Frame, but there is no getting away from it that it is smaller and more discrete and it has:-

  • Built in ND filter to enable shooting wide open in bright light
  • OVF (with switchable EVF) which is wider than the frame, so you can see what is coming into the frame, also has option to display live EVF in corner of OVF
  • Acros Film Simulation (with optional R/G/Y filters), excellent B+W JPEG film simulation, which as ISO increases introduces film like grain noise as opposed to more digital noise
Its horses for courses, you'll argue the Sony camp all day long as you are a fanboi, whereas I'll argue the Fuji camp all day, as I love their cameras - even though I sometimes crave a bigger sensor and more MP (not for street though)

My wife loves her XT-20+XF23mm F2 for street, as she likes the tiltable screen and the ability to focus and take images using the touchscreen, @dancook loves his Leica Q2, and has proved to be a great camera in a great pair of hands, his images are always top-notch, we are all different.
 
Let's face it, you can use any old camera/lens combo for street. photography as it's not a demanding genre. Most of it is pointless crap anyway. Being unobtrusive is down to the photographer, not the camera, so camera size is irrelevant in that respect and is more about self-image than anything.
 
Let's face it, you can use any old camera/lens combo for street. photography as it's not a demanding genre. Most of it is pointless crap anyway. Being unobtrusive is down to the photographer, not the camera, so camera size is irrelevant in that respect and is more about self-image than anything.
I think anyone who treats it as undemanding will probably end up with pointless crap.
 
I'm usually not a big fan of f1.x minimal depth street shots of strangers but I do like historical scenes which show us what the places, people, fashions and life looked like and for me these are usually most effective when they have depth. These could be taken with just about anything. So that would be my choice, any portable camera fitted with a lens probably somewhere between 24 to 50mm or equivalent at f8+.
 
A confident street shooter will get better results with a Lego camera than most of us with the fanciest gear available. I used to love a bit of Street but is been a long time and I haven't the kahunas to really go for it now. I shy away from a shot too often and it's all about the moment, if you're not going to commit it doesn't matter how snazzy your gear is
 
It still has to be a camera that inspires you to take photos.

The RX1R frustrated me with it's slow AF and poor manual focus options
The Ricoh GR step focus zone focusing option is great, but wasn't thrilled with ISO
The A9 was too fiddly to change settings on the fly as you have to look at the screen

People approach street differently, I like to be ready for spontaneous action with f1.7 1/2000th and also being able to quickly flick from to f8 1/125th if it suits.

These are all technical aspects of the cameras which affect the way I approach street photography.

The end result is always that I want something wall-worthy
 
Leica M3 & either a 35 or 50 lens depending on my mood. They're both tiny so I usually take both.

Neopan 400 or Tri-X if I'm feeling extravagant, Foma 100 pushed +2 if not.
 
It still has to be a camera that inspires you to take photos.

No it doesn't, you get inspired to do it, then find any old camera that gets the job done. Most street specific photographers I've known only ever used manual/zone focus too

Very few people leave the house without their phone, and very few phones come without a camera, they are ideal for street.
 
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Not that I have one at the moment but A73 with Samsung 35mm 2.8. Small and silent combo with nailed in AF just makes for a stealthy combo.
 
No it doesn't, you get inspired to do it, then find any old camera that gets the job done. Most street specific photographers I've known only ever used manual focus too

Manual focus or rather zone/hyperfocal shooting would get the shots I tend to like more but if going for the minimal depth look then the gear will matter much more as you'll need a f1.x lens that has nice bokeh and a camera with good and fast AF with face/eye detect maybe and possibly coupled to some sort of wide area focus mode. People who shoot like that may well shoot with the camera away from their eye for stealth reasons so a decent back screen, possibly tilting, might be needed too.

To be honest I can sometimes admire some shots like that but the ones I like will probably be few and very far between and I'll probably always prefer a shot with depth and some significance, relevance or interest to me other than a pretty minimal depth shot of a random babe/old man with a beard on the street that could have been taken 10 seconds ago but I might even like a shot like that in 20 years time as a record of what life was like in 2019.
 
It still has to be a camera that inspires you to take photos.

The RX1R frustrated me with it's slow AF and poor manual focus options
The Ricoh GR step focus zone focusing option is great, but wasn't thrilled with ISO
The A9 was too fiddly to change settings on the fly as you have to look at the screen

People approach street differently, I like to be ready for spontaneous action with f1.7 1/2000th and also being able to quickly flick from to f8 1/125th if it suits.

These are all technical aspects of the cameras which affect the way I approach street photography.

The end result is always that I want something wall-worthy

That sounds more like wanting a camera which doesn't hinder you taking photographs rather than one which inspires.
 
*street*, for me, requires something small, that zooms, has a flip-up screen, integrated ND filter, handy EV dial.

Canon G7X on aperture priority. :p
 
Panasonic GX80 + 45-150mm, M43 that 90-300 equiv.
I use the GX7 with that lens. Very effective combination.
 
Digital - iPhone. It's discreet, water resistant and has a huge depth of field so you don't miss focus
Film - Voigtlander Vito II or B. You don't really need anything other than a zone focusing manual exposure camera for film, rangefinders and meters are kinda superfluous
 
In answer to the question asked I would say the best camera/lens combo for street photography is what you have with you at the time.
 
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For me it is whatever camera\lens I happen to own at any given time.
 
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