bug powder dust, originally uploaded by Rufus Mangrove.

flatbush avenue, brooklyn

right here, right now, originally uploaded by Rufus Mangrove.

nyc subway

tell me, is it time, originally uploaded by Rufus Mangrove.

flatbush avenue, brooklyn

gone, originally uploaded by Rufus Mangrove.

5 train, nyc subway

escape from new york, originally uploaded by Rufus Mangrove.

number two train, uptown.

nyc subway, manhattan.

I recently got my hands on an Olympus XA and a Rollei 35 with a Tessar 3.5 40mm lens.  The following is the first part of my review of these camera gems as it relates to street photography.  This first part will discuss the aesthetics of the camera.  The second part (coming soon) will discuss the actual photographs (this is probably what you’re after most).

For those street photographers who started taking photos in the digital age, you were left with the usual quandary.  On one hand, you loved the DSLRs for their creative control, no obvious shutter lag, and the ability to use interchangeable lenses to fit your needs as a shooter.  On the other hand, the DSLR’s were bulky, sometimes intimidating to your subjects, and, as they were bulky, you didn’t always have the camera in your hand to take the shots.

So, you thought, let me try some of these apparently fast automatic digital point and shoots, like the G powershot series and the Sigma DP series etc.  On one hand, you liked the compact nature of these cameras, in that you could reasonably keep these cameras in your pocket or jacket to take a shot when and where you wanted to, such as, for example, in the subway.  On the other hand, the small sensors had terrible noise when bumping up the ISO in low light conditions and, most importantly, there was shutter lag.  And, when you are trying to do surreptitious shooting, the damn lcd screen is on unless you turn it off before hand.  Either way, you got by, but you wondered whether there was a way not to compromise.

That was essentially the dilemma.  Most street shooters got around this by having both.  One DSLR in their bag and the small automatic p&s in their pockets.  Then, assuming you got the shots you wanted, you work hard post-processing to convert it to black and white so that it can look close to what you may remember back in the day of what your black and white shots looked like.

Of course, some street shooters are excited by the new 4/3rds system with the compact cameras but again you worry about shutter lag and all that jazz endemic with small compact digital cameras.

Enter the Olympus XA and the Rollei 35.  These cameras are small, i.e., you can fit them in your hand.  They are also “full frame” cameras.  Oh, and yeah, they use film, so obviously developing is always an issue.

Let’s start with the Olympus XA.  The damn thing looks like a toy camera.  It has a 28mm lens and essentially has an aperture priority mode.  It comes with a rangefinder, although it does not have the brightness of a Leica.  Then again, you’re not paying $1000 plus for an Olympus XA.  You can get one off ebay for under $100.  For street shooters, this camera is a gem of outrageous proportions for the following reasons.

First, the sound of the leaf shutter clicking is so quiet you cannot hear it.  It’s about as quiet as a digital point and shoot camera.  The shutter “button,” and I use quotes because it’s not really a button but almost a hair trigger switch, is so easy to use.  You barely have to press it for it to fire.  And, to advance the film, it uses the same “technology” as disposable cameras to advance the film . . . that plastic rotating disc.  However, the XA doesn’t have a loud noise when you are advancing film, unlike a disposable camera.  This camera is a gem for taking shots in the subway, because the shutter sound is nearly inaudible.

Second is obviously the size.  No one knows you have a camera.  It fits good in your hand and makes it easy for thumb shooting (specifically, if you are shooting from the hip, which is what I primarily do).  The problem with the size is that if you have big hands, like myself, the camera almost seems too small.  In that regard, you can’t put the entire wrist strap around your wrist because it will constrict your hand too much.  I solved this easy problem by just putting the wrist strap around my fingers.

Third is the look of the camera.  It looks like a cheap toy camera.  And, because it’s wide angle, even if you are bringing it to your face, you don’t have to necessarily point it directly at the subject to get the subject.  It’s not a sexy camera and thus attracts almost no attention, particularly if you put electrical tape over the annoying olympus name over the clam shell.

Finally, the camera is easy to use.  Easy to load film.  Easy to start taking shots.  The issue you will find with most of these cameras is finding a light meter that is accurate and a rangefinder that is bright enough.  The camera generally overexposes so I adjust the iso up to, for example, 200 or 400 if my film iso is 100, thereby adjusting it by 1 or 2 stops.  Since I rarely ever bring the camera to my eye, the rangefinder is essentially useless for me unless I’m prefocussing.  Further, I’m a walking street photographer as opposed to a stationary one, so I use more the scale focussing technique with this camera than the actual rangefinder.

All in all, aesthetically, this camera shines for a street photographer.  It’s the quietest thing I have had my hands on which I can fit in my pocket (try doing that with a Leica M3).

The Rollei 35 is a sexy camera.  Unlike the XA, which looks like plain jane, this camera will attract some attention because of its classic box looks.  That said, it’s small enough that most people won’t be able to see what you’re holding.  Further, unlike the XA, it’s fully manual.

The Rollei 35 takes some getting used to.  For example, the shutter button is on the right side and the shutter advance is on the left side.  This is not so great if you’re doing one handed shooting.  Further, loading the film is a little tricky at first (not so tricky like the older Leicas) but not as easy as the XA.  The shutter sound is louder than the XA but still quiet.

Some street photographers may have issues with its lack of a rangefinder, but if you’re comfortable with scale focussing, it shouldn’t really matter.  The 40mm is wide enough so that getting acceptable focus is not going to be extraordinarily difficult.  There is a light meter on the Rollei 35, but I haven’t tested mine for accuracy.  I generally use the Sunny 16 rule which has served me just fine.  I’m not taking shots of indoor models here for a magazine so I’m not terrible concerned about the light meter.  I keep it at f/8 and 125 for most situations and that covers it.

With my hands, I find the Rollei 35 a bit easier to thumb shoot with from the hip than the XA.  However, Rollei 35 also put the lens collapse button right next to the leaf shutter button so at first you may find yourself pressing the lens collapse button instead of the leaf shutter button. 

Further, unlike the XA, where all you have to do to start shooting is to open the clam shell, with the Rollei, you have to i) remove the lens cover and ii) extend the lens.  All of this takes 3 seconds, but it’s 3 seconds more than what you have to do with the XA.  Since the lens doesn’t stick out terribly much, I usually leave the lens already extended so it’s ready to fire.

Aesthetically, you can’t go wrong with either camera, as they make great street shooters for their size and back to basics feel.  The Rollei 35 is a sexier camera and may make you want to take more shots with, but the XA is a workhorse and comes in significantly cheaper than the Rollei.  I think this is based not on results so much as it is the Rollei looks cool and feels cool.

If want to add something new to your street photography arsenal, I strongly suggest you look at these two cameras.  In a few weeks, I’ll add a review of what kind of photographs these cameras are capable of taking in the street photography realm.  For now, though, this review is limited to what these cameras feel like on the street.

For many digital photographers, maintaining and editing their images is an important task.  Unlike yesteryear where in a best case situation we kept negatives or color slides in boxes, most everyone in the digital age has some sort of program to organize and edit their work.  For the purposes of this post, I’m going to provide a short review on Iphoto ‘09.

Let me first start by saying that I have been using previous versions of Iphoto for sometime now.  I liked that you could group things by keywords.  That was my main concern.  I didn’t want to have a whole blob of photos and not know where anything was.  This becomes an issue the moment you start going over 1,000 photos, unless of course you have some super human memory.  So with previous versions of Iphoto, you clicked on a keyword and, voila, the pictures that you had labeled with those keywords popped up.  I have no complaints there.  The problem, though, with prior versions of Iphoto was that it was really slow, particularly if you had 10,000 photos or more.  Anytime you turned on Iphoto, the whole damn library loads.  Yes, there are programs/apps out there where you can divide your library and stuff, but frankly I found it to be a pain in the ass.

I use to run one of those Emacs (discontinued) in 2004-2007 then moved over to a Macbook with 2 gigs of speed on Mac Ox 9.  Even with 2 gigs of speed, the older versions of Iphoto were just running slow. 

So, I tried Aperture 2.0 to see if I could shake things up a bit.  Aperture is an excellent program and there are numerous reviews out there describing its benefits.  Good keyword functionality (in the end, that is my primary concern:  can it organize the photos the way I want them?  And, can I search for my photos easily or do I have to go through the rigmarole?).  It also had good editing and RAW support which the old Iphoto just didn’t have.  But, when you have only 2 gigs of speed (and, at that point, I had upgraded to Leopard), Aperture runs SLOW.  Real slow.  In that regard, Aperture 2.0 becomes unusable.  I’ve seen it run on the Macbook Pros with no problem.  Thus, unless you have a Macbook Pro or a Macbook with the right graphics card and 4 gigs of speed, I do not suggest Aperture because of its speed issues (despite the benefits of the program).

A bit dejected, I picked up Iphoto 9.  I was impressed because the keyword functionality remained the same.  But something more important that it picked up from Aperture 2.0:  separation by projects or events.  In this regard, if you so decide, you don’t have 20,000 photos loading.  Instead, you have only 1,000 events (each event consists of however many photos associated with a particular download or date).  What does that mean for speed?  It means Iphoto runs very, very quick and it doesn’t have those pesky freeze issues it was having before.

As for editing, Iphoto 9 can handle RAW within the program.  Basic RAW editing and other editing stuff.  However, because I normally convert my RAW to black and white, I wanted more control over this process than Iphoto was letting me have (Aperture has quite a bit of control here).  So, I acquired Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac.  In Iphoto 9, you can set Photoshop Elements 6 in preferences as your “external editor.”  When you click on a photo, it gets sent to Elements.  And, the good thing about elements apart from greater creative control is the SPEED.  It’s blazing fast.  Unlike aperture which, with a Macbook with 2 gigs of speed running Leopard takes 30 seconds or more to convert from RAW to JPEG, Elements takes about 5 seconds, even with large compressions. 

That makes workflow run very smoothly, so you can spend more time taking pictures as opposed to finding or editing pictures on your computer.

What is street photography? That seems to be the age old question. I think the easiest way to describe it is to analogize it with pornography, in that you know it when you see it.

When someone asks me what street photography is, I say to look at the works of, among others:

-Garry Winograd
-Henri Cartier-Bresson
-Bruce Gilden
-Leonard Freed
-Chien Chi-Chang
-Gilles Peress
-James Nachtwey
-Nikos Economopolous
-Carl De Keyzer

Alas, I don’t profess to have the definitive working definition. This is not to say that street photography cannot be defined or is non-definable, but rather my purpose here is to underscore how fluid the concept of street photography is.

Perhaps street photography is a frozen moment of life captured. Maybe street photography seeks out the ordinary moments and ordinary people to show just how extraordinary that moment is or how extraordinary that person is, even for that split second the camera soaked up that image. Maybe street photography is an expression of the photographer’s soul, the viewer having the opportunity to see what he or she sees or feels or wants you to see or feel. Or maybe street photography is simply just that, photography that takes place out on the street, outside the comfort of a studio or a home.

Despite maybe the amorphous definition or definitions of street photography, one thing I am confident to say is certain. When you look at the works of the above photographers, it’s clear that just because anyone of us can go out and purchase a nice camera with a nice lens doesn’t make you a high-caliber photographer. When you look at the works of these photographers, you will see a clear and distinct difference between “pros” and “amateurs.” It’s about their eye. Photography is a great equalizer because if you don’t have the equipment you can’t take shots. At the same time, just because you have the cash to acquire that equipment, doesn’t mean a hell of a lot in terms of your work.

A quick example. I saw a documentary of James Nachtwey called “War Photographer.” They put a special video camera on his lens so that “you” could see what he was seeing. I spoke with numerous people about the film and they agreed that when you saw Nachtwey’s finished image, it was much different than what you saw on the screen. The screen wasn’t screwed up. Rather, Nachtwey’s eye was so unique that he was able to capture something differently, even though we were seeing what we initially thought was the same scene.

Just because it’s street photography doesn’t mean composition doesn’t matter or that compelling images don’t matter. As long as photography is photography, they still apply. Seeing the work of the photographers above only underscores that point: it’s perhaps easy to shoot something and call it “street photography,” but to shoot street photography well is really difficult.

I think this post was largely in response to some websites or forums on Flickr out there proclaiming that street photography has no rules and that it can be anything you want it to be. While in spirit, I agree with these proclamations – which of course can be applied to most other forms of photography – it fails to recognize the lessons and importance that these artists have shown us of what solid street photography is all about.

Go to any forum about street photography and you’re bound to find some thread on “what the best lens for street photography is.”  Let me just get this out of the way now when I say that the best lens for street photography depends on what you are trying to capture.  Some street photographers like Billy Gomez and Jonathan Weiskopf go for that dreamy bokeh feel and thus often use the 135mm focal length.  Others like Winograd used a wide angle lens in the 20mm range.  In the end, to each his/her own.  What works for some people don’t work for others and vice versa.  The point of street photography is to shoot.

That being said, I’m here to discuss the often ignored Canon EF 24mm f/2.8, one of Canon’s “Ugly Duckling” lenses, because it doesn’t have USM or IS and was built at some point in the 1980s.  Just so we are all on the same page, I use this on a Canon 400D, which has a 1.6 crop.

As a street photographer, being able to shoot at a moments notice, sometimes without the benefit of bringing the camera to your face, is of necessity, not to mention doing so without the subject noticing.  The 24mm fits the bill on both fronts.

First, just by its function as a wide angle, things are going to be in “acceptable” focus most of the time, even when you’re at f/2.8.  Is it going to be as sharp as scissor at that f stop?  No.  Then again, and to take an extreme example, shooting at the hip at a moments notice with an 85mm at f/2.8 vs. shooting with the 24mm at f/2.8 is, for the former, most likely to give you a blurry shot while the latter is most likely going to give you an acceptable shot (although this statement says nothing about the actual composition).  Sometimes, street photography is about percentages . . . meaning, for every ten shots you take, you’ll be happy if 7 of those are actually in acceptable focus, and of those 7, maybe only 1 of those will have acceptable composition.  I find that the 24mm helps with those percentages.

Now, some people think that the lower the f stop, the better the lens.  Maybe that is true in a vacuum.  But you have to ask yourself what you are going to be using the lens for.  Most of my street photography takes place during the day when low light issues are not a problem.  Thus, I’m usually hanging out around f/5.6 or f/8 anyway.   That f stop range keeps you out of sharpness issues that some reviewers have pointed out.

The other great thing about this lens is the size and build.  It’s obviously heavier than the nifty fifty (then again, what isn’t heavier than that thing??) but sticks out about an inch or so more.  Even with the lens hood, it’s not an imposing lens to your subjects.  As to the build quality, of course, it’s no L lens . . . it’s not made of steel or titanium or whatever the hell they’re using now.  It’s solid enough.  In fact, I dropped it from a distance of about 5 feet onto concrete.  It was on my camera and landed smack down on the front of the barrel.  Something fell off from the front and the front part bent slightly — enough so that I can’t really put on the lens cap but still I can put on the lens hood.  That being said, the damn thing still works as good as new.  If anything, that’s a testament to its strength.

Sure, it focuses loud, but when we’re talking “loud,” we’re not talking Pantera or Metallica loud.  We’re talking loud in the sense that you can actually hear it focussing, unlike those USM lenses.  But no so loud that the subject is going to look over and say, “Hell, man, I know you’re photographing me because I can hear it focussing.”  If your subject can actually hear your camera focussing, chances are you are not on the street to begin with.  Also, if you’re pre-focussing to hyperfocal or some other distance, as I recommend to do, then the whole idea of “loud” autofocusing is a moot point anyway.

Now, even with the crop sensor, the 24mm takes a couple sessions to get used to.  If you’re used to shooting in the 50mm range on a crop, you’ll find that many of your shots will seem as though you were standing farther back than you actually were.  By its very nature, the 24mm requires you to get pretty damn close to a subject/s for better compositions.  It can take some time to figure out exactly how close that is.  I know there’s all those markings on the lens to determine acceptable focussing distance, but forget that.  I’m talking about “acceptable composition distance.”  Frankly, I don’t even know if that’s a term but it gets you away from meters and numbers and more towards how close you have to be to usually get a good composition.

I’ve used two rules with this lens interchangeably.  The first one is the double arm lengths rule.  If you put your arm out, then imagine your arm doubling in length.  That’s how close you should be to the subject.  This rule is helpful when your subject is fairly stationary.  The second rule is the 1 second rule.  This is a more amorphous concept.  It usually works best when the subject is walking towards you.  Okay, here it goes.  If you are used to the 50mm range lenses, then wait 1 second longer with the 24 than you would with the 50 to take the shot.  It will seem close — agonizingly so — but that gets you to a good intimacy that the 24 allows you to have.

If you want to spend a hell of a lot of money, then get the L lens.  It looks nicer and focuses faster.  But, if you want to spend only a fraction of that with a workhorse lens that, well, works good, then go for the 24mm f/2.8.