The Faces of Occupy Chicago

I recently processed a roll of film from a trip to LaSalle Street in Chicago, which is where the Occupy Chicago folks have set up camp.  I've been shooting events like that with a wide angle (either a 17-35 zoom or a 21mm prime) - it gives me enough depth of field where I don't have to worry about shutter speed or focusing accuracy and allows me to focus more on the content of the shot rather than the mechanics behind it.  Shutter speed - constant. Aperture - constant. Focusing distance - constant at 5-6 ft.  Then it's all a matter of positioning yourself where you want to be and closing the shutter.

I'm out there and for some reason I decide to take out the 90mm Elmarit. It's a great portrait lens (low contrast, kind of flare-y if stray light hits, but a great looking "glow"), but not really your first choice for a cramped-quarters street lens.  It turns out that putting a 90mm lens on naturally turns you into a street portrait guy as opposed to a pure street photographer.  I was mostly setting up in a corner, waiting for someone to come into my field of view and notice me, then hitting the shutter the split second after the deer-in-the-headlights look went away (there's a microsecond where befuddlement turns to puzzlement turns to slight anger turns to acceptance turns to resigned acceptance - it's a great moment to hit).  And that's the moment I think I caught here.  And it planted the idea of a future project (hopefully something I can get done before the Big Cold One hits Chicago) - The Faces of Occupy Chicago.

One of the faces of Occupy Chicago.

Sloping

This is from a recent photowalk with the Chi-togs Facebook group.  This is a group of individuals I met through the Eric Kim street photography workshop.  Eric was back in town for a day so a few of us decided to get together and walk the streets.  This is a great group of guys, I'm reserving some time to blog about them later when I get a chance.

I think we ended up doing more talking than shooting though, as I only ended up with 30-40 shots out of which only a few were good enough to post.  This is one of them, taken during the Halloween festivities in Daley Plaza.  I'm not going to pretend this is a great shot or anything, I do like the angles and slopes of the metal sculpture - I've noticed that I tend to gravitate towards triangles.  Purely unintentional as a matter of fact.

One other notable thing about the photowalk is that I finally shot with all film.  I've tried to balance my film shooting with digital by carrying a Leica along with my D700, this time I took an M3 (w/ Tri-X @ 800) along with an F6 (Acros 100).  The Acros 100 (this shot was taken with it) was a particularly bad choice on an afternoon that was partially cloudy day made worse by the shadows from the Chicago skyline.  Shutter speeds were pretty slow even with a 17-35 2.8, I ended up switching to a 50/1.2.

Thoughts on Nikon 1

So Nikon announced the V1 / J1 mirrorless cameras yesterday - the internet is all atwitter with how these cameras are doomed to failure (small sensor! no fast prime lenses! huge DOF! small sensor!). It's funny how the Ricoh GRD/Canon S90/Panasonic Lumix cameras don't seem to merit those same complaints, even though they have smaller sensors and no interchangeable lenses.
Since street photography is what I'm trying to focus on lately, I naturally thought about the V1 (with viewfinder, the J1 is not even worth considering in my opinion) as a platform for street shooting.  So if I were building an ideal (real-world) street kit, what would I choose?

1. Customization - The Ricoh GRD III is an almost perfect example of a camera being customizable.  Almost every button could be re-mapped and you could store all settings into custom memory banks.  Perfect - the jury is still out on the new Nikon so I won't say anything more here.
2. Hyperfocal setting - an ideal street camera would be very easy to enable/disable hyperfocal shooting.  Again, the Ricoh was nearly perfect for this - Snap Focus was a breeze to setup, you could configure the hyperfocal distance, and it's small sensor naturally gave plenty of DOF to work with.  So the sensor size on the Nikon 1 isn't necessarily a bad thing here.  Pair the 1 with the 10mm f/2.8 (27mm FX equivalent) and you've got a recipe for lots of DOF.  The final test will come with the Nikon software and menu systems and whether they make this easy to setup and use.
3. Size & weight - for me, this seems to be one of the absolutely essential aspects of street photography.  You simply must pair your gear down to the absolute minimum.  the Nikon 1 is the smallest interchangeable lens camera with integrated EVF. I suspect that you'll eventually be able to take 2-3 small primes and probably carry less weight than if you were packing a rangefinder with lenses.  (And my dream kit with a 2.7x crop factor? How about an 7mm [~19mm], 13mm [35mm], and 35mm [~90mm]?  Sounds delicious.
4. Oh and what about the F-adapter? The 90mm equivalent described about would be filled in perfectly by the already released 35mm f/1.8 G - a spectacular lens in its own right.  The 50/1.8G would be about 130mm, an ideal portrait length.  The mind starts to shudder.
5. Fast Autofocus - along with hyperfocal settings, fast AF is a must.  From what I've read, on paper the Nikon 1 just blows away the competition - 135 single points, 41 area with phase and contrast detect modes.  This should be comparable to most DSLRs.

So personally, I think that the Nikon should be a beast for street photography provided that a true wide angle lens is released very soon. 

The picture of health

The picture of health, a photo by SL_Photos on Flickr.
I could have called this one "Chinese Ham" - the camera came up and this guy was instantly on a stage playing his part.  The "Health Source" sign in the background is a nice little touch.  This was taken during a photowalk in Chicago's Chinatown as part of the Eric Kim street photography workshop.  I'll be writing more about this fabulous experience later, once I free up from my busy (non-photography) work schedule. 

From this point forward I will no longer put my gear list for each shot on the blog. I'm done thinking about equipment, I need to focus on the shot & the vision.  I will say that I used a 35mm prime lens, this focal length (along with an ultra-wide) seems to be the ideal lens for street photography.  It's just wide enough to pull in more of the surrounding environment than a 50mm, but not so wide that you have to worry about extraneous elements poking their head into your frame.