Street Photography Lens Selection

While delivering my talk "street and architecture - genre that overlap" a question that has come up recently is relating to lens choice and focal length. I came across this nice video which I felt was worth sharing along with my own views in relation to the 3 questions in the video.

Street Photography Lens Selection

1. Focal Length There are several aspects to this - How close you are or want to be to the subject - The effect of lens foreshortening and how you want to use that - The look you want of the image as wide will include a lot of peripheral aspect zoom will not In short this is where the skill of being a photographer comes in from the perspective that you need to previsualise what you want and make your lens selection accordingly.

2. Choosing Aperture For me this comes down to what you want in focus as this will then dictate the aperture and the associated DOF based on you lens selection and distance form the subject ( and where you focus) - Person in focus background out of focus - wide aperture ie f2.8 - Person and background in focus - mid range aperture ie f8

3. Zoom V Prime There is this view that if you are a real photographer you must use primes and challenge yourself - but why? The key thing is you get the shot so why not use a zoom lens ie 24-70mm for the flexibility it gives you relative to the loss of sharpness - its a personal choice. I don't want to miss a shot because I've constrained myself with a prime.
   

The aspect that is also a consideration and is not included is shutter speed as for me i have found <1/200sec - stops the action - frozen

1/200sec - some slight blur of hand or foot and a sense of motion

>1/200sec - more blur and more motion #street