These Camera and Lens Combos Will Make Street Photography Fun

These camera and lens combinations will help take your street photography to new heights.

There are some things in life that just go together. Mac and cheese, and peanut butter and jelly come to mind, but there are also non-food items that pair equally as well. When it comes to street photography, having the perfect camera and lens combinations can make or break the experience. In this roundup, we’ll take a quick look at the best camera and lens combinations for several different platforms that will make street photography easy and fun.

These camera and lens combinations will help you excel in street photography. These combos are small, light, easy to use, and capable of capturing some truly gorgeous images. The cameras are incredibly powerful and have lightning-fast autofocus systems; most of them boast weather sealing too. The sensors inside these cameras are capable of shooting at high ISO’s so you can capture images in any lighting situation. The lenses are incredibly sharp, fast to focus, and render colors beautifully. With these setups, it will almost be impossible to capture bad images. Check out our favorite camera and lens combos for street photography below.

 

Canon EOS R – RF 35mm F1.8 USM IS Combo

 

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

Pros

• Build quality
• Weather sealed like crazy
• Autofocus is good
• Protects the sensor when off
• Canon’s menu system is still simple
• Ergonomics feel nice
• With a lightweight lens, it feels just as nice as a Sony camera.
• These are some of Canon’s best RAW files that we’ve seen in years
• Good battery life
• Fast Wifi transfers, though not as simple as Sony’s

Cons

• Needs Dual SD cards
• Needs a joystick
• The magic touch bar is odd and could use refinement.
• Optimizing the way the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed dials work, such as the automatic metering for ISO, not cool
• Canon needs to improve or change their Face and eye detection

Buy now ($1,999): Amazon

 

Canon RF 35mm F1.8 USM IS

 

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

Pros

• Small
• Lightweight
• Fairly fast to focus
• It’s a lens that is pretty much designed to be always on your camera
• Image stabilization, which is very much needed in the system
• Gorgeous bokeh
• Sharp enough for most users but not as sharp as most L glass we’ve seen and used. Still, it’s a shocker

Cons

• We would have gladly paid more money for Canon to weather seal this lens

Buy now ($499): Amazon

 

Pro Tip: Street photography is one of the most challenging, most rewarding genres of photography. Being able to tell the story of people on the streets can yield some impressive images, but having the confidence and knowledge on how to approach people can be hard to obtain. Fortunately, the folks at Creative Live have a couple of outstanding street photography guides that will teach you how to approach people, and how to capture unique images. The best part is that they are incredibly affordable.

 

Nikon Z6 – NIKKOR Z 35mm F1.8 S Combo

 

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

Pros

• Comfortable handgrip
• Excellent Electronic Viewfinder with 100% frame coverage
• EVF protrudes from the camera body, minimizing contact between your nose and the rear LCD
• The top display shows you all of your settings at a glance
• Intuitive touchscreen rear LCD
• Solid battery life when using newly designed EN-EL15b batteries
• Robust weather sealing
• Works with most existing Nikon F mount lenses using the Nikon FTZ adapter

Cons

• Single XQD card slot may be a deal-breaker for photographers with certain workflows
• Colors on the rear LCD were inconsistent when compared to EVF
• Autofocus performance, while better than the Nikon Z7, still leaves much to be desired
• Certain settings were oddly organized within the menus
• There is way too much settings information displayed on the rear LCD, often getting in the way of you framing your shot

Buy now ($1,796.95): Amazon

 

NIKKOR Z 35mm F1.8 S

 

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

Pros

• Robust weather sealing
• Excellent sharpness
• Compact and lightweight

Cons

• More expensive than competing Full Frame 35mm f1.8 lenses, though it can be argued that it is the most feature-packed and the best

Buy now ($846.95): Amazon

 

Pro Tip: There’s no doubt that you’ll capture a ton of images when you’re out walking the streets, simply because there is so much going on around you. The cameras listed here all produce pretty hefty RAW files, so the last thing you want to do is run out of storage space on your SD card. Stock up on them while the prices are low, and make sure to leave extras in your pockets so that you always have more storage available.

 

Fujifilm X-Pro 2 – Fujifilm 23mm F1.4

 

Here are the pros and cons from or full review:

Pros

• Fujifilm kept mostly the same ergonomics
• Massively improved autofocusing
• So many new autofocus points
• Uncompressed RAW file format
• Thumb joystick for quicker AF point selection is a Godsend
• The absolute best high ISO output from an APS-C sensor camera that we’ve seen in years. It beats some full-frame cameras!
• Weather sealing
• Fujifilm Acros is fun to play within the right situations
• Nice JPEG output
• RAW file versatility is excellent
• Autofocus performance in OVF mode is even more improved than the EVF performance was.
• ISO dial built into the shutter speed dial is very nice
• The menu system is a bit easier though it can still be complicated at times

Cons

• We wish that the WiFi uploading process were more fluid
• A locking button should be placed on the exposure compensation
• Autofocus could still be faster despite coming ahead. Though it’s great for candids at events, you’ll want to use zone focusing to ensure the best images for street photography

Buy now ($1,699): Amazon

 

Fujifilm 23mm F1.4

 

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

Pros

• Superb image quality
• Beautiful bokeh
• Lots of great sharpness with even a bit of what seems like micro-contrast
• Well built
• Snapback focusing ring

Cons

• Expensive

Buy now ($899): Amazon

 

Pro Tip: When you’re out and about on the street, your gear is going to get dirty: that’s just a fact. Dirt, dust, grease, grime, water spots, fingerprints, you name it: all will appear on the front element of your lens at some point, so you need to be prepared to deal with that on the go. Carry a small, basic lens cleaning kit with you so that you can handle whatever junk attaches itself to the front of your lens. The last thing you want is for your images to be ruined by dirt. This one has everything you need, and it’s priced just right.

 

Sony A6400 – Sigma 16mm F1.4 DC DN Contemporary

 

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

Pros

• Compact & lightweight
• Fast & accurate autofocus
• Excellent image quality
• 11 FPS continuous shooting with AF & AE tracking (mechanical shutter only)
• Improved Real-time Eye AF
• Real-time Tracking
• Real-time Animal Eye AF
• 4K video recording without 30-minute limit
• Competitively priced

Cons

• Lacks in-body image stabilization
• External battery charger not included
• Single SD card slot with support for only up to UHS-I speed cards
• The rear screen flips up into where the hot shoe is located and becomes essentially useless if you’ve got any attachments mounted onto the camera

Buy now ($898): Amazon

 

Sigma 16mm F1.4 DC DN Contemporary

 

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

Pros

• Fast aperture
• Weather sealing to a point
• Fast autofocus performance for the most part
• Nice bokeh
• Sharp, surprisingly sharp

Cons

• To be honest, nothing

Buy now ($389.95): Amazon