Street Gear

This is Jaylin Da’Shawn and he’s a street photographer in New York City. He was recently featured in a Paulie B Walkie Talkie interview and if you’re interested in street photography then Jaylin has a lot of good things to say to you.

But we’re not here for Jaylin’s excellent wisdom on street photography. We’re talking about Jaylin because of the special camera he uses these days to shoot on the streets of New York City.

You see Jaylin is working with a modified Leica designed for use with microscopes and other scientific endeavours. His Leica doesn’t have a rangefinder!

What that means is Jaylin’s Leica has no viewfinder and is essentially using a very expensive point and shoot film camera.

So how does Jaylin take photos?

Jaylin has set his shutter speed to be high enough to avoid camera blur from handholding the camera at too low a shutter speed and again high enough to stop any action of anything moving in his image. And either he guess at what aperture to set or uses an external light meter to get the right exposure number.

Then he has practiced enough to know how to frame the image and point the camera in the right direction to get the image perfectly framed.

It doesn’t get simplier than this.

So what kind of gear do you “need” for street photography?

The answer is it doesn’t matter.

You can use your smartphone (and a lot of street photographers do) or a cheap film or digital point and shoot. Or you can use your DSLR or mirrorless camera (usually with a fast 35mm lens) or yes you can shoot with a Leica (M6 body $8,000 Cdn) and a Leica 35mm f/2 ASPH APO-Summicron-M Lens ($12,000 Cdn) and you’re good to go.