Some of the most experienced street photographers wouldn’t dare not look through a viewfinder and let someone know that they’re in the act of capturing a photo of them. But when you’re just cutting your teeth, Street photography is a very intimidating task. There is that natural fear that you’re not going to know how people will react to you. For that reason, many street photographers like shooting from the hip. In truth though, many don’t leave this method because of the viewing experience that it allows. With the Fujifilm X-T2, you can use the tilting LCD screen to do just that with ease.
The Fujifilm X-T2 has an LCD screen with various displays. We recommend the Live View preview and slinging the camera around your shoulder or cross body. Then, simply go about shooting in the same way that medium format photographers used to: but looking down at the screen, focusing, composing and shooting. Be sure to choose a focusing point beforehand and set it to the largest focusing point setting; as that’s the easiest way to ensure that you get your subject in focus. The X-T2’s screen goes even further by also flipping out to the side, which can make photographing people at a higher level (in the case of sitting down and waiting for folks to go by) even easier by opening up more creative possibilities.
Before I go on, just a little bit of a disclaimer: street photography is all about intent. If you are photographing in this way because you simply want to document a beautiful candid moment, then please proceed. Be ready to explain yourself, apologize, possibly delete an image, or use the camera’s Wifi to beam the image to the person’s phone. Photography (especially street photography) is people work!
To make this even easier, we recommending using a wide angle prime lens from Fujifilm’s great offerings. These lenses have a focusing ring that shifts backwards and lets you do something called zone focusing. It’s a sort of manual focusing that lets you always get the subject tack sharp in focus as long as you keep a certain distance away from them. It’s how photographers have shot for years!
However, the wider lenses are also great because they focus faster. Due to the laws of physics and depth of field effects, the X Trans sensor inside the X-T2 has a 1.5x crop factor that makes an f1.4 lens have the same depth of field as an f2.1 lens in full frame standards. To that end, more is in focus and you can shoot at a faster shutter speed–making it better for street photography.
Xpert Advice is a monthly collaboration between the Phoblographer and Fujifilm designed to teach you photography tips and tricks in a bite-sized package.