Thoughts on Using a 28 mm Lens for Street Photography
I grew up as a Navy dependent and lived on US military bases most of my childhood. The “quarters” I lived in were largely the same as the living space of my friends. In some cases, we had the same military issue green furniture. I did not arrive at adulthood with the dream of owning my own home. Even today I resist anything other than white wall paint, specifically Benjamin Moore OW2. I went to more than your average number of schools, making a change about once a year. That took something of a toll, by the way. All of this has led to my mindset that seeks both regimentation and novelty. It is my own personal culture war.
I mention this because this blog is about using a 28 mm effective focal length lens for street photography. I do not have an agenda to convince you that there is a best focal length for our genre. Far from it. You should absolutely make the choice that feels most comfortable for you.
Taken with a 28 mm lens. No faces here!
I have a friend, John Carnahan, who uses a 200 mm lens to get some of the most compelling street portraits I have ever seen. The photo below, one of my all time favorite photos, was taken by John with a 400 mm, f/2.8 lens. Ironically, he gets just as much pushback, maybe more, as we all do from bystanders who are prepared to challenge photographers on what they perceive as privacy issues.
Photo by John Carnahan. Used with permission. John’s gallery can be seen on Instagram at @jacahan and on Facebook at John Carnahan.
Most of my photographs were taken with an effective focal length of 80 mm. They are very different from the images that I take now, but I am not at all sorry that I shot at 80mm.
This was taken in New Zealand with an effective focal length of 80 mm.
Who is going to say that Henri Cartier-Bresson should not have used the 50 mm focal length? There is certainly an argument for that focal length. We think of a 50 mm lens as the closest to seeing as humans do. Actually, a closer match is a 43 mm focal length, but a 50 mm prime lens is good enough and available, where as you will be hard pressed to find a 43 mm prime lens. One observation that I have read about using that focal length, is that it perhaps worked better in Bresson’s relatively uncrowded world.
You might wonder what pushed me to move from 80 mm to 28 mm. When you have to change schools every year, you get used to having a lot of novel experiences. Everything about the 28 mm focal length is new to me. I am energized by the challenge, even though it probably sets me back in terms of quality street photography.
First let’s review some of the benefits of a 28 mm focal length:
A 28 mm lens is typically small and light. It allows you to use a smaller, more compact camera. Hooray. This feature alone is enough for me to make this change at this point in my life.
While 28 mm is slightly wider than what the human eye sees, it is rather close to our cone of visual attention plus peripheral vision. My 80 mm photos tended to be much more simple. Now I like to go all out and get lots of interesting detail.
A wider focal length gives you more depth of field. It allows you to shoot in layers so there is interest throughout the frame. It can help get sharp pictures of people on the move. A fast shutter speed will not produce a sharp picture if your subject moves to a part of the frame that is not in focus.
A 28 mm focal length distorts perspective when you shoot from a low angle. It creates a super human effect. I like this distortion in other people’s images. I definitely want to get it in mine from time to time.
I don’t take a lot of photos with unusual perspectives, but this one exactly fit my desire to take a street photo that included the Duane Reade building.
You can get a wide perspective in narrow spaces.
This is a fairly narrow alleyway.
The 28 mm lens is not a fish eye. It is, for the most part, distortion free on the edges. It is sort of the bottom-line lens for no edge distortion. Its close cousin, the 24 mm lens, is likely to have edge distortion.
It can help you be a stealthy photographer. If you put your subject on the edge of the frame, they often miss the fact that their photograph has been taken because the camera is not pointed at them. I definitely do this.
It is psychologically easy for me to take a picture with my heroes on the side of the frame.
Here are some of the challenges of using this wide angle lens:
First of all, if you want to see the face of a human in a picture taken with a 28 mm focal length, you absolutely have to move in closer. Yes, that is hard for me. But there are some benefits to this practice. Moving in closer also helps minimize the clutter on the edges of the frame. It creates a visual intimacy that you cannot get when taking the picture from farther away, even if it is framed in the same way.
There is a downside to a greater depth of field. You cannot blur your way into a good image. The background is going to be ever present. For this reason, the 28 mm lens is often not the choice of photographers who specialize in street portraits, although the wider focal lengths probably paved the way to the development of environmental street portraits.
“Saving for a Hooker” was an inevitable part of this portrait.
Because so much can be going on in a frame, you have to be more vigilant than ever to get an identifiable subject. You have to look for a dramatic focal point. Good composition is required. For example, compositional elements like patches of light to illuminate your subject or leading lines that draw the eye to your subject or a frame within a frame to simplify the image are needed to help your viewer find the subject.
You have to think in the broad terms of the shapes in the frame. So much is going on, the viewer will rely on shapes and patterns to help them simplify the frame. This is a different way of seeing the scene that requires some photographer adjustment.
Whatever lens you use, stick with it! Street photographer and blogger, Eric Kim, suggests using only one focal length for street photography for an entire year. Timothy Roper, in his blog, Thinking in 28 mm: Learning to Love Wide, puts it most eloquently, “But one thing, in general, I’ve learned as I’ve gone wider over the years is, it’s also not just a matter of sticking a new lens on a body and going about things in the same way as before. Really learning a lens so it is second nature, so you can look around you at any time, and see in terms of that focal length, takes different thinking and different seeing.”