This is street! Pretentious, some might say. But I can live with that. This recent photo has all the ingredients I love about street photography. The same gestures repeated. A moment captured with a certain energy. I took this photo last Saturday and it’s good for me because it makes me forget my rather low-key start to the year so far.
Let me share the photo again here cos’ WordPress always reframe badly the opening photo …
I’ve been shooting exclusively in 35 mm for a few months now. It requires a different approach and you have to learn a lot if you come from 28 mm like I do. 35 mm requires you to keep a certain distance from the subjects you photograph. Gone are the days when I spotted something interesting and ended up rushing at it without asking myself any questions, because the focal length meant that the subject was almost always in the frame, and the closer you got, the more interesting it became. That’s the magic of the 28 mm. Another advantage of using the 28 mm was that you could blend in more easily with a more compact crowd and still take photos without attracting attention.
I don’t hide when I take photos, but I try to be as discreet as possible and if I’m asked to shoot blind, I do it without any problem. Some people will say that a blind shoot has no value because the photo hasn’t been framed and in the end it’s just a lucky shot if the photo turns out well. I don’t agree with that idea. When I was using the 28 mm, I took a huge number of photos blindly. Only because I knew my distances perfectly and I knew what was going to be in the frame. The 28 mm has this ability to absorb a scene because it’s a wide-angle lens. It’s an art of shooting blind. Yes, there is an element of uncertainty, but your eyes see the scene and the camera only serves to capture that moment. A gesture, a fleeting interaction, a moment is enough for me to have the reflex to press the shutter release, even if I haven’t had time to compose while looking at the LCD screen of my Ricoh GRD IV. There have even been situations where shooting blind was the one and only solution for me to capture a scene without risking altering it by attracting the attention of the subjects being photographed. This is not a photo made underhand. The photographic gesture is assumed. I just want to capture a moment without interaction. I’m aware that many photographers won’t agree with this philosophy. For me, capturing a moment comes before any other consideration.
The 35 mm camera encourages me to work differently in the street. You have to stop trying to get too close to people and the scenes you want to capture. I know this for a fact, but I still tend to get too close, and I end up missing a lot of shots. Rule #1 with 35 mm: forget your old habits and keep your distance!
One of my fears when using 35 mm was how to manage zone focusing in the street. You know, that technique that allows you to do away with AF by using the aperture to have a zone where the focus is relatively sharp. I say ‘relatively’, because obviously it will never be as sharp as when using AF. With the 28 mm, I had a crazy depth of field that turned my Ricoh GRD IV into the ultimate point and shoot. At f4 and focusing at 2 m, everything was sharp between 1.7 m and infinity. In other words, focusing wasn’t a problem and I just had to concentrate on what was happening in the street. It’s true that the Ricoh GRD IV is a special camera. If I look at my Fujifilm X-E2, which has an APS-C format, 28 mm, f8, with a the focus at 2 m, everything is sharp between 1m and 25 m. It’s not infinity, but it looks like it…
I switched to the Fujifilm x100F, which also has an APS-C sensor but a 35 mm focal length. My big fear was how I was going to be able to work with such a focal length in a focusing zone. I got out my app again to calculate the DoF and came to the following conclusion. f8, focus at 3 m: DoF of 1.6 m at almost 20 m. In theory this is almost the same as the 28mm.
Unfortunately, the habits I’ve acquired over so many years of shooting with a 28 mm camera have taken their toll. It’s hard to get rid of the habit of wanting to get too close. But if you stick to the focusing zone, it works very well, even if I’m always surprised. But I’ve studied science and I know there’s no miracle in it. It’s just physics, and more specifically optics. I still remember my preparatory classes when we did experiments with light passing through a sheet of paper pierced with holes of different diameters. It’s exactly the same with my camera.
So as far as zone focusing is concerned, the rule is simply to apply rule #1: keep your distance, the rest works just like with the 28 mm, nothing more, nothing less!
What also changes with 35 mm is that there is less distortion. The 28 mm used in a certain way could create surreal scenes with striking foregrounds and insane depth of field. I liked using 28 mm in this way. But you had to be careful not to fall into the gimmick. I overdid it a lot and that’s why at a certain point I started to air out my compositions more, to stop always making the same style of photos… The 35 mm lens encourages you to work differently. And you can say goodbye to the gimmick that worked so well with the 28 mm. All in all, I like the change.
However, one thing annoys me, but it’s not to do with the 35 mm, but with the Fujifilm X100F. People see me in the street. Yes, OK, I know I’m not invisible. It’s normal for people to see me. What I mean is that people pay attention to me. The Fujifilm X100F attracts attention. Its retro look doesn’t go unnoticed. For someone who shoots almost exclusively with a Ricoh and wants to keep a low profile without being noticed, it’s pretty annoying! So what can I do? I could use my Ricoh GR3, which I don’t like, and shoot 35mm on it, but the temptation would be too great to also shoot 28mm… Or else get a GR3x, but the 40mm scares me a bit about zone focusing. According to my app, for a focus at 3m, the zone of sharpness is only 6m instead of the 19m of the 35mm…
In any case, learning to use 35 mm with the Fujifilm X100F is shaking up my habits a bit, but for now I’m enjoying it. This focal length isn’t ‘natural’ for me yet, it still requires a lot of resources in the street to frame and I haven’t yet mastered my distances to think about shooting blind with it. But it took me a number of years to master the 28 mm perfectly. I need to give myself some time…
That opener is quintessential “Street”, summed up in one shot. Very nice work. I really love the shot of the boy in the Game t-shirt.
I’ve been considering switching back to 35mm for a long time. I went to 28mm because I wanted to get closer and be in focus, but found I prefer scenes in any case and so now 28mm is redundant. Agree, shooting blind is fine and it maintains the integrity of the scene. Also you’re right, I know exactly what I’m getting in the frame when shooting blind. It’s not hit or miss, nor luck.
That’s the street photography i like. Nothing fancy or striking. Like your shot of the bohemian window, nobody would care about this photo and I really like it a lot ! 35 mm is fun and you still need to get close, but not as close when using the 28 mm. I think that deeply, I’m still a 28 mm shooter, but I really want to try to master the 35 mm. The focal length forces me to frame differently and it requires more attention. The 28 mm was easy cos like I said, the focal just sucks the scenery. Anyway, 28 mm or 35 mm in my personal case, if I shoot shit it will still be shit in wide angle or not ! Same goes for a good photograph !
Bit late to the party, but just to say how much I like these Jeff. So refreshing to see some old school classic street with a humanistic approach … no visual gags, just human stories, big or small, in every shot.
I’m proud of being an old school street photographer! It’s funny, cos today I read an mail of Alex speaking of old street photography. I’ve already written on it some months ago and pausing for this approach in the streets. I ‘m not a fan of the trendy jokes in sp. OK they make me laugh or being a smile but that’s all. They are just visual jokes but soulless..’
Bonjour, ma pratique photographique a énormément évoluée en passant de l’ argentique au numérique. Ne serait-ce mais surtout par l’ utilisation toute nouvelle que l’ on pouvait faire de l’ écran, pour composer son image. Sur mes leica et autres reflex j’ utilisais principalement des focales 35 et 50. Depuis le passage au numérique, je suis beaucoup plus souvent au 28 voire au 24, fortement influencé par la “praticité” de la visée sur l’ écran. De fait certain apn sont même fabriqués sans viseur, devenu pour beaucoup inutile. Je voudrais faire un rappel un peu technique ici : ce que l’ on appelle infini en photographie est, par convention pratique autant que technique, la distance focale connue multipliée par 1000. Ainsi l’ infini d’ un objectif 50mm sera de 50 mètres ; et d’ un 24 mm de 24 mètres. Une notion facile à retenir pour organisée au mieux sa profondeur de champ souhaitée. Bonne soirée.
Intéressant cette définition de l’infini “photographique”. Je ne connaissais pas ! C’est un raccourci assez simple à mémoriser. Tout comme toi, je trouve beaucoup plus pratique aussi de cadrer avec l’écran LCD. Je pensais que c’était à cause du 28 mm qui était jusqu’à présent ma focale préférée et que j’ai utilisée pendant plus de 7 ans. Mais depuis que je shoote en 35 mm avec le GR3, rien n’a changé. Je shoote toujours sans viseur avec l’écran LCD ! Par contre je me rends compte que quand la lumière vient à manquer, le viseur me manque. Je m’en suis beaucoup servi en Thaïlande car j’ai shooté avec mon Fujifilm X-E2 et j’avais besoin de faire la mise au point manuelle car j’étais souvent à pleine ouverture (f1.4). J’étais beaucoup plus rapide et précis. L’AF du Ricoh GR3 est très mauvais quand la lumière vient à manquer