Cameras/Lenses/Stuff
Here you will only find what I recommend because I already own it or have owned it and love or have loved it. I have no interest in fronting useless items or other things I have no claim to know anything about. There will be cases where what I link to is a newer version of what I have/use due to my version being out of production. I don’t purchase a lot of gear just to have it. I love cameras and everything related to the process of photography but I try to only buy what I need when I need it. If what I use is still doing what I bought it to do then there is no reason for me to upgrade. With this in mind, it’s my recommendation to buy the best pieces you can that do what you need in order to not have to keep buying upgrades or repairs. Avoid the urge to just buy because someone else has it if what you currently have is working well. If other gear does something you urgently need it to do significantly better than what you already have then by all means buy it - but use it as long as you continue to find it useful. If you are a professional then this will make you money and if you are an enthusiast then this will save you lots of money over time.
As a disclaimer, I am linking some of these items to Adorama Camera in NYC and some others to Amazon (wherever they claim to be from) while still others are just to shops that I trust that carry the item (and I have used) but I have no affiliation with. My goal here is to facilitate your ease of acquiring good items to help you further your street photography at a good value without worrying if the sources are reputable. Enjoy your browsing.
This is my main camera for street photography (it actually is my camera). I carry it everywhere. It’s the Leica M10 Monochrom (there is no “e” at the end). It has been replaced by the Leica M11 Monochrom which is the camera that this image is linked to. If you can get a new old stock or used (from a trusted place) M10 Monochrom then you can save a fair amount of money and have a wonderful camera. I am not upgrading because I love what this does. I also have an M10P which appears in the next box that shoots color but even though I can convert the color to black and white, I grab this camera at least 85 percent of the time if not more. I love my M10P (I actually like the way it looks better with it’s silver finish) but I still grab this one more often. To each their own.
The lens on it is a ZEISS Biogon T* F2 35mm. It is outstanding. It is different than the Leica 35mm Sumicron but not inferior (or superior). I have had it since I had a Zeiss Ikon rangefinder (a film camera and currently out of production I believe). The camera was wonderful and the optics stellar. Zeiss has a well earned reputation. The lens is a bit larger than it’s Leica counterpart but is not a large lens. It’s also about 1/3 the price of it’s Leica counterpart. You can’t go wrong either way. I already had this lens so I have no need to replace it. It’s locked to the face of this camera nearly all the time. Most of the images on my website and Instagram feed were made with this lens.
This is the Fuji x100s. For years, this was my go to travel camera, street camera and daily carry. It is light weight, has great image quality and wonderful color if you like that kind of thing. It’s traveled the world with me. It has it’s quirks which I love and others may not as all cameras do. It’s not usually a good idea to buy a camera just because someone else likes it. Different people bond with different things for different reasons. A friend bought one because she always saw me with it and saw how much I truely enjoyed using it. She didn’t like it and sold it. She is an excellent photographer too. We are just different people. I don’t recomend buying a Leica either if you haven’t tried one and don’t want to commit to the learning curve. Two fairly unique things about this little wonder is the lens has a leaf shutter. For those that don’t know what that is or why its good i’ll explain. The shutter is in the lens and not at the focal plane. It is either open or closed at whatever speed you select unlike a curtain shutter which is never really fully open. Why this matters is that you can use a flash at any speed at higher power than using a special flash with high speed sync to get around the limitation of the cameras flash sync speed. If that isn’t cool enough, it has a built in 2 stop ND filter. There’s a lot to like about this camera. The current model x100v is constantly sold out so that should tell you something as well.
Here is the 21mm Lens I use when I use a 21mm lens. The ZEISS Biogon T* 21mm f/2.8 ZM. It is larger lens than the Voigtlander 21 Color-Skopar. It is longer than the LEICA 21mm f/2.8 ASPH but a decent bit lighter. All said and done, it’s not a big lens, just bigger than some of the competition. As far as performance, it’s stellar. You can’t go wrong if image quality is your aim. It’s also less expensive than all of the Leica offerings if price is an issue. There are a lot of offerings in this catagory from various manufacturers. The only other one I personally would consider for a digital Leica would be the LEICA 21mm f/3.4 ASPH SUPER-ELMAR-M.
This was my main street photography and daily carry camera until the Monochrom entered my life. It is the M10P. An outstanding piece of photo gear both in form and function that I still love and use. I can’t make color images with the Monochrom so I choose this when color comes to mind. It was my first digital Leica/rangefinder. If you are a Leica/rangefinder user then it will feel familiar and comfortable from day one. If you aren’t then there will be a learning curve but rest assured that if you are up for the challenge then you will be rewarded. The images it returns on your invested use are wonderful and due to its very manual nature you get a feeling of accomplishment that can be lacking in the cameras that do everything but acquire the image for you. It’s true (and important to understand) that the most important thing is not the camera but the person using it. Any camera is capable of producing an image. It’s fulfilling to use a camera that you want to use for whatever reason and not just because it can perform a function.
The lens here is a very useful and fun ZEISS C Sonnar T* 50mm f/1.5 ZM. It has an interesting look wide open due to it’s 1930’s design. It should be seen to be appreciated. It’s not for everyone wide open. Unlike the lens it was copied from it has modern lens coatings and handles flare very well. The C in the designation stands for compact and that it is. It is probably the smallest 50mm lens with such a wide aperture. Stopped down (which is where I shoot it for street It’s sharp and contrasty. Open it up for portraits and you get some unique character. At maximum aperture you get an image rendering that is unique to this lens. It is made well, compact fast and renders an image from modern to classically unique depending on your chosen aperture and your desired look. A lot of bang for the buck. Oh, it does have a focus shift issue that is well documented. It has never given me an issue with either film or digital at the distances and apertures I shoot.
This is my late 1950’s Leica M3. While it was never my daily carry, it has seen a fair bit of use. Leica builds the M series to last. I hope the digital sensor lasts half as long as this M3 has been kicking around. I bought it used a number of years back from KEH camera brokers online. They are a very reputable company and have a great return and warrenty policy because they stand behind what they sell. Not much to say other than it works still after being approximately 65 years old. It looks great for any age and I am still happy to have it. That said, if I were buying today I might look at younger models. One that gets too little love is the M5. One of their best but it never took off due to it looking different than the other M’s. It was ahead of it’s time. I had an opertunity to buy one a long time ago when I was a broke young photographer/bartender/student from a friend for $500. It was more than I could justify at the time for a camera that wasn’t going to be making me money. Oh how I wish i could have that opportunity back.
If you want film but prefer new, Leica has re-released the M6 with a few meaningful upgrades (I like that they made the top out of brass this time and newer coatings on the optics is a big plus) and continues to sell the MP and MA of course.
This odd looking thing (both on and off of the M10 Monochrom) is the Leica Elmarit 135mm 2.8 lens with what are affectionately called “goggles”. The goggles are lenses that fit in front of the two rangefinder lenses and magnify them for the appropriate field of view for the lens. It also activates the 90mm frameline and with the magnification it becomes the appropriate way to compose your image. Back before the inclusion of a number of different framelines in the M2 and M3 they added these contraptions in order to be able to use more lenses than the built in framelines allowed. They added new framelines in each successive body until they had most of them covered. The lenses wider than 28mm still require some kind of external viewfinder. It is big and and heavy for the body. This is not really what rangefinders are typically used for. That said, it makes a very good image. It’s older so it’s a little less contrasty and a touch softer but that is a big plus for portraits I feel. It focuses easy enough if you aren’t shooting action.
The piece in the hot shoe is the Leica Visoflex 2. It is an electronic viewfinder. It give you a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) view with any lens you put on the camera. I find it’s main use personally is for portraits with the 135 if I want a shallow depth of field. It’s also good for wider shots if you want to compose more critically in camera. Rangefinders are not 100% accurate as framing around the edges goes. It doesn’t work on film cameras as would seem obvious. The viewfinder can tilt upwards so that you can shoot at a lower angle without contortion. It does seem to suffer from a minor bit of lag (better than the previous generation) so while you can shoot action, it is not as fluid as with a modern mirrorless (like the Q2 or Q3). It works well and I like it a lot but I consider it more of a specialty item.
This is the Leica Q2. It’s actually my wife’s camera but every now and then I grab it for a change of pace. It is a modern mirror-less and not a range finder. It is designed to look similar since the look of a Leica M is classic and beautiful so why not keep it in the family if you can. It has a fixed 28mm f1.7 lens that provides outstanding results as you would expect. 28mm is not everyones choice of lens but if you are a street photographer then knowing that it was Garry Winogrand’s favorite focal length should give it credibility. An interesting feature is the ability to crop in camera as if you were using 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 75m lenses. It brings up frame lines like in an M camera (so you still see what is happening outside of the frame lines) and will produce jpgs accordingly. It has no effect on the RAW image so you can use it as a guide with the jpgs and crop to match with the RAW file. You can set it to shoot similar to an M (zone focus/manual focus without the rangefinder) or you can auto focus. It also has a brilliant Macro setting in the lens that works very well and is actually optical and not a digital trick. There should be a lot of Q2’s for sale now that the Q3 has been released. If I were buying right now, I’d get the Q3 only for it’s articulating rear screen. If you like to shoot from the hip but wish you could compose in camera at the same time then an articulating rear screen is your savior. It is seriously fun to use. You can get close and frame precisely without ever making eye contact. There are times I wish the M’s could do that but then I snap back to reality. They wouldn’t be the same and sameness and history are a large part of the M’s charm. With the Q series (which btw is Leica’s best selling series) Leica can do the things that keep them modern while still offering the M to those of us that want to purposefully keep things more challenging.
Did I mention how beautiful the color is straight out of camera? If not then consider yourself told. Gorgeous! It also comes in a monochrom version as well.
This is the same M3 I’ve already introduced. Here though it’s wearing a Leica 21mm viewfinder on top and a Voigtlander Color-Skopar 21mm f/4 P Lens. It’s an outstanding little lens. I do mean little too. It’s tiny. It is really everything an M mount 21mm lens should be. Great image quality, light weight, all metal (even the lens hood). F4 is a great aperture for those of us walking around zone focusing at f8. It also allows it to be so much smaller than almost any other lens in it’s class. It does have a downside though unfortunately. Due to the rear element being closer to the focal plane than is optimal for a digital sensor, it vignettes more than it does on a film Leica. Film doesn’t need micro lenses to assure that the light at the edges contacts at the correct angle. Digital does and therefor if the rear lens element is too close then edges of full frame sensors have a harder time with the light that falls on them. I have heard that for the same reasons it has color issues on full frame sensors too, which makes sense. I can’t personally attest to it and I’ve heard others say they didn’t have issues. I have only used it on full frame sensors with the intention of being black and white from the start and I can say that vignetting was noticeable. I have from time to time used it just for fun. Sometimes the vignette works for the image and other times it can be lightened and cropped. I would imagine that on cropped sensors there would be no issue other than it not then giving you the very wide angle that it’s designed to give. On film there are no issues and it’s a stellar lens.