This video is sponsored by PGY Tech. More on them later in this video.
There's not many decisions you can make in street photography that are as simple,
affordable and freeing as shooting with vintage lenses.
Compared to buying a modern autofocus prime lens, you will save a lot
of money. But it's important that you know how
to get the best out of shooting with vintage lenses in a street
photography context. If you have yet to invest in
any vintage glass whatsoever, you're watching this video at the right right
time. Because I have some advice for you.
You can avoid having to use chunky lens adapters like this if you're adapting
to a mirrorless camera and if you avoid buying lenses that were designed for
SLR bodies. Instead, you can opt for lens adapters
designed for rangefinder bodies. This is the size of an SLR
lens adapted to a mirrorless Sony. And this is the size of a
rangefinder lens adapted to a Sony mirrorless.
It's like downsizing from normal yoda to baby yoda.
SLR adapted lenses are going to be much bigger when adapted to mirrorless
cameras because they have to increase the distance between the rear element of the
lens and the sensor. You will notice this is going to
be smaller if you're adapting to the DSLRs, but it's something to be mindful
of. However, if we use a rangefinder mount
lens like this M 39 mount, the lens can go much, much closer to
the sensor because in the rangefinder there was no mirror between the film
plane and the rear element of the lens.
Looking again at my Minolta lens adapted to my Sony emount and then my
Canon lens adapted to my Sony emount, you can see just how much of
a difference this distance makes. This is the Sony 50 mm f
one eight on the Sony A7C.
This is genuinely a small mirrorless setup, but with that 35 mm you
save a lot more space and weight. If you are considering adapting vintage
lenses purely for street photography, I would urge you to not really consider
anything above 35 mm in the short term because a lot of the benefits
you're going to see from adapting a manual focus vintage lens is going to
be from having a wider field of view and zone focusing.
So this 35 mm M 39 mount is a very good example and this
28 mm Minolta MD mount is also a very good and affordable example.
The reason for this is because these wider focal length lenses tend to have
deeper zones of focus compared to longer focal length lenses.
Having these deeper zones of focus means that even in a fast moving street
setting you're going to get more in focus with a wider field of view.
Rather than trying to go down to something like f two eight on a
50 mm and struggling to get anything in focus.
In a fast moving environment, shooting with a deeper depth of field is
something that you'll start to feel is actually more important when shooting
street photography as you go on compared to shooting like long focal lengths 85
mm, 50 mm, f 1.8 or something like that.
Focusing with wider focal length lenses and having more of your composition in
focus will help you develop much faster and much better as a street photographer.
Rather than relying on background blur as like a compositional tool, using f stops
like f eight, f eleven and f 16 will make this process a lot
easier and you'll get used to shooting with deeper zones of focus, quickly and
responsively in a street photography setting.
Let's demonstrate why using this Minolta 28 mm, looking at this Minolta 28
mm f two eight as an example, noticing these zone marks and their
indicated f numbers, you can see the close point of focus and far point
of focus become further apart. So at f eight we can see
our close point of focus is 1.5 metres all the way up to infinity
at our far point. And then at f 16 we see
zero nine metres all the way to infinity.
This becomes a massive advantage and if you're shooting on a bright sunny day,
you can shoot at f 16 and get pretty much everything within
reasonable focus. If at the moment you're used to
shooting things with shallow depth of field, more wide open apertures, this
might take some getting used to. But in terms of shooting street
photography, being more responsive and getting much more in focus within your
compositions, this is going to really help you develop.
When it comes to shooting with these lenses on mirrorless, cameras or even
DSLRs, it's important not to use your viewfinder too much for nailing critical
focus. Because the advantage of shooting on these
wider vintage lenses is the fact that we can do things like zone focus,
and that helps us be quicker rather than slowing down to critical focus in
a fast moving street scene. Using the viewfinder for rough framing is
very, very good, but using it for critical focus will just slow you down.
Something I always think about is what's the difference between my viewfinder up
here and my viewfinder down here? For me, I find having my camera
down here is actually a bit better for a lot of subjects because I'm
a bit tall and having my camera down here means that my perspective is
parallel with more of my subjects. It's the same reason that when I'm
taking photos of dogs, I have my camera all the way at the ground
versus from my eye level, looking down on them.
And if you're worried about not nailing critical focus by not looking through your
viewfinder, once you can learn your close point of focus with zone focusing, you
don't really need to look to see if you're in focus as long as
you know, like what 1.5 metres is, for example.
Anything past that is going to be sharp.
One thing I was not immediately aware of when I started shooting with vintage
lenses was the fact that some lenses choose either metres or feet for measuring
distance. My Minolta 28 mm luckily has both,
so it was never really a concern for me.
But then I have a couple of M 39 lenses now.
My 50 mm IndoStar is in metres, however, my Canon 35 is actually in
feet, so for me I typically think in metres.
So it's just a little bit of brain calculation to have good reference
points that you should probably be aware of when you're considering new lenses.
This segment of this video is sponsored by PGY Tech.
A big benefit of shooting with wider focal length vintage glass is being able
to shoot a little bit more blind than always having to look right through
your viewfinder. By learning the width of your field
of view of your lens and learning your focus distance, you're able to shoot
certain shots without completely looking and disturbing a scene.
This allows you to focus on being more naturally a part of a scene
and just noticing subjects in your periphery that you might find interesting.
This is mainly a benefit for candy street photography, but it's also very
good for catching fast moments in crowds. Using camera straps like this PGY Tech
wrist strap means that you can kind of just carry on being natural in
the street, lifting a camera here and there to grab shots without drawing
attention to yourself. I particularly like using wrist straps
when I go out shooting just on my own for a dedicated photo walk
because it means your camera is always gripped in your hand and you're ready
to go, but you also know it's secure in case you're daydreaming you drop
your camera, it's going to be totally safe.
A big benefit of the PGY Tech strap system is the fact that it's
actually a quick swap. So just by pressing in here, you
can take off your wrist strap and then you're able to mount it onto
both points using the shoulder strap. So you can go from using it
on a wrist to go to using on a shoulder just like that.
When I'm out shooting, sometimes I'll actually keep both straps on me, so
I'll use the camera strap and I'm kind of moving between spots and then
I can keep the wrist strap on myself like a bracelet, because we
actually have this little magnet point to help to keep it nice and tidy.
And then when you want to swap over, you can just move onto the
wrist strap and put the camera strap in your bag or jacket pocket.
A benefit, I find, of using a camera strap like this while I'm shooting
street as well, particularly with wider focal length zone focusing lenses means
that you can carry the camera kind of at your torso height and then
just press the shutter using your thumb in a bit more of a casual,
nonchalant kind of way and not drawing attention to the fact that you might
be grabbing a couple of shots. This is particularly effective if you're
shooting with a camera that has a quieter shutter or even like a silent
mode. This means you can just move in
between crowds and almost blindfire with a wide focal length to see what you
can get without distracting people. If you're looking for a nice camera
strap system that's really high quality, super durable, and these straps have this
quick swap system so you can put anchors onto your different cameras and
then swap between as and when you need to.
If you're someone that carries two or three cameras on a shoot, cheque out
my link in the description where you can get a discount on these Pgytech
camera straps. And thank you to Pgytech for sponsoring
today's video. Before we finish, I have one last
thing I'd like to share with you. The key benefit I found from shooting
with vintage lenses or manual focus lenses on digital cameras, on mirrorless cameras,
has been the freedom that it has given me rather than always looking
through my viewfinder, trying to nail focus, waiting for autofocus to confirm on
a subject, just knowing distances, just knowing zone focus becomes so much easier.
Sometimes you don't even have to look. You don't have to worry if the
Autofocus jumps onto a tree or a person's face, you know everything's going
to be in focus. And I always try and remember, for
many decades, autofocus did not exist and people got on just fine with manual
focus, wide lenses in fast moving street photography.
And this is a skill that I think is valuable for shooting on both
digital and if you start shooting on film a bit more.
Shooting film and street photography can be stressful if you're trying to nail
critical focus, looking through your viewfinder.
But if you're just doing it in zone focus, you'll actually hit more
moments than you think, and especially those fast moving candid moments.
If using manual focus lenses like this is interesting to you for zone focusing,
cheque out this video here on a mirrorless camera with a third party
manual focus lens that's super convenient and lightweight for zone focusing.