This article features cameras which are popular amongst 'Purist' street
photographers and offer full manual controls similar to the film cameras
of the 1950s/60s -
Cameras have come a long
way from the 1950s/60s when we used a manual film camera with an
optical viewfinder, a manual focus lens, a lens filter, a roll off film and a brain
that can determine the exposure in relation to the light and the
pressing of the shutter button to fire the shutter and capture the
image. The creation is complete and the development of the negative is undertaken at home
and the final print is produced using an enlarger. The smell of the
darkroom chemicals stimulates the senses and the entire experience is
enhanced by the buzz you get when that final print appears in the dish and is finally framed on the wall. To this day, it is often said, that those street photographers who maintain this 'purist approach' in
their photography, achieve the greatest fulfillment.
With the advent of digital cameras, it is often argued that 'purism' in
photography is dead but one can argue that many modern digital cameras
and lenses offer the same handling and shooting experience. It can also
be argued that those early photographers worked their magic on their
negatives by tinting, dodging and burning, amongst many other image
altering techniques. So, surely it is permissible to work some magic on
digital RAW files using Adobe Lightroom and other photo editing
software.
For my Street
Photography(since 2013) I have been mainly using a digital Fujifilm X100S compact camera
with its 23mm fixed lens. It is an incredible camera even although it
has been superseded by other Fujifilm models with the latest being the
(2020) Fujifilm X100V. It offers a reasonably wide field of view at 35mm
but I can crop in, using computer software on my computer and
simulate a zoom of around 75mm which is ideal and yet retains decent
image quality. I tend to shoot RAW images, the equivalent of 35mm film
negatives and post process/develop them in Adobe Lightroom.
I have used all sorts of lenses for street photography; from 24mm
all the way up to 600mm fields of view and fitted to compact and huge DSLRs but
strangely enough, it was a 58mm Helios manual focus lens fitted to a Zenit 35mm full frame
film camera, that delivered the most satisfaction. These days I am pretty
ruthless in deleting digital images so shooting RAW digital files is
less of a hassle, as there are very few to post process in Lightroom.
I also enjoy using my Nikon
FM3A 35mm Film SLR with Nikon 28/50/135mm AI prime lenses.
The
OM-D E-M10 Mark IV Camera
is ideal for street photography, especially with a prime lens fitted. Of
course you can fit zoom lenses as well and OM-D offers a
multitude of lenses to suit the
available budget.
Its an entry level camera body and costs around £649.00 and a
M.Zuiko 17mm f1.8 Prime Lens with a
34mm field of view comes in at £399.00.
The
Fujifilm X100V
compact camera with its 23mm
(35mm field of view) fixed lens is ideal for street photography.
It possesses a
hybrid optical and electronic viewfinder. The optical part mimics the optical
viewfinder of the Leica M series of camera. The X100V is not inexpensive at
around £1,299.00 vat inclusive but a darn sight cheaper than a Leica.
I already own the
Fujifilm X100s
which was announced back in January 2013 and since then Fujifilm have updated
the X100s a few times to the X100V. Size and weight are all important if
you are going to carry a camera on the street for most of the day, especially if
you carry on into the night for low light photography under street lights.
The Fujifilm X100V is a well sought after camera and new stocks are
extremely hard to find, if at all? The camera second-hand is also hard
to find and costs more than the camera's retail price by a large margin.
Check out these videos -
Would I like a Fujifilm X100V Compact Camera - of course I would BUT I
like my Fujifilm X100s and the extra cost of the model upgrade is hard to
justify.
It appears that Leica has removed a number of digital 35mm 'Full Frame'
cameras from their range and kept their Leica M10-P as the 'go to'
camera for street photography. The following video covers the Leica M
Cameras, old and new, but for me the interesting part of the video is
his analysis of photography -
Ted Forbes discusses Leica -
On the 14th January 2022, Leica announced the Leica M11 rangefinder
camera which is a worthwhile comparison to the above Leica M10-P -
I must admit that I would love a Leica M3 35mm Film Camera in mint condition, as
a present. A
modern digital
Leica M10-P Camera is as near to a Leica
M3 film camera as you can get. The camera body
costs £6,750.00 vat inclusive and a decent
Leica Summilux 50mm f1.4 ASPH-M Lens costs
£3,500.00 vat inclusive.
If there are any mega rich widows out there, I'm your man.
I currently use a digital
Fujifilm X100S Compact for my
Street Photography
and I have never sought to replace it. It just does a great job and the handling
of it with its f2 23mm (35mm field of view) fixed lens is superb.
However, a compact 35mm 'full frame' digital camera with a f1.7 28mm fixed lens
would make for a nice upgrade. Step forward the digital
Leica Q3 Camera and at a cool £5,300.00, it
is not cheap but it offers excellent technology for the money.
The
Sony A7C is a very impressive compact and
lightweight system camera but what makes it ultra special: it sports a 35mm full
frame digital sensor and is ideal for street photography.
You can purchase it with a
very nice compact
Sony FE 28-60mm f4/f5.6 Zoom Kit Lens or just the
body and add your own lens. The kit lens combo offers a nice focal range but the
purist
would
probably prefer a 50mm prime lens.
For a lens choice (for me) the choice has
to be the Voigtlander 50mm f2 APO-Lanthar Manual Focus Lens. Both combos offer a
compact solution but the Voigtlander has the edge for low light photography.
The Sony A7c has 5-axis image stabilisation built into the body which helps to
eliminate camera shake when shooting low light images at lower shutter speeds.
The camera has all the modern technology for the techno geek but also excellent
manual controls for the purist and of course the pre-requisite electronic
viewfinder.
However, the electronic viewfinder is an older and lower resolution
specification which may not be to everyone's liking and the shutter speed is
limited to 1/4000 sec. I guess Sony has traded off the excellent viewfinder and
shutter speed of the
Sony A7 III 35mm Full Frame
Compact System Camera for the compact build of the Sony A7c?
Voigtlander Lens - Main Features
■ Full frame Sony E mount with electrical contacts
■ Enhanced high performance utilizing aspherical lens surfaces
■ Optical design optimized for digital imaging sensors
■ Extremely solid and durable all metal-barrel
■ Manual focus for precise focusing
■ Installed with aperture click stop switching mechanism for video
■ Apochromatic optical design that eliminates chromatic aberrations
■ 12 aperture blades enable circular aperture at F2.8
Check out this video -
The Sony A7c camera body comes in at £1,900.00 vat inclusive and with the kit lens
£2,150.00. The Voigtlander 50mm f2 APO-Lanthar Manual Focus Prime Lens costs £869.00 vat inclusive.
I still use
my
Nikon FM3a 35mm Film SLR
Camera with Nikon 28/50/135mm AIs prime lenses - a great
diversion from digital. I am off this week (6th May 2021) with a fellow
photographer to Linlithgow in Scotland and I am taking along my Nikon and some
rolls of
Kodak Ektar Colour Film
from the fridge to shoot some scenes of the fishermen at the loch.
I usually get
my film developed by a professional lab and tend to use
Kodak Express. This coming winter, I might
return to home developing my film, and to make is easier, I would shoot
Monochrome which is simple to develop and scan to
digital. I would have to re-invest in some new darkroom kit as I last used my
(long lost) kit back in the 1970s.
Colour film
development at a local lab is a bit expensive, if I also want the negatives scanned,
but luckily I managed to get my old Windows XP computer to work so I can use my
old Canon Canonscan 4000 FS scanner.
A scanned image -
There is no doubt that a Nikon SLR film camera with a manual focus lens offers a
different handling perspective to a digital camera as all the modern technology
is stripped away and it is back to basics - nice. You can still purchase second
hand 35mm Film SLS cameras and one of the best retailers for Nikon is
Grays of Westminster,
where I purchased mine back in 2009. Please note that I do not receive any
remunerations from any of the retailers mentioned in this post.
If you have enjoyed this article - please donate to my
Charity of Choice -
The Sick Kids
would
probably prefer a 50mm prime lens. 
