What’s the Best Street Photography Lens for You?

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One of the questions I get asked the most is what’s the best lens, or focal length for street photography. This is a good question because over years of taking photographs on the street I’ve come to realise that what lens you choose can have the biggest impact on your photography and your style, so in this post I’m going to discuss which lens is best to help you improve your street photography and decide what focal length works for you.

Zoom vs Prime 

So the first thing to mention is deciding over a zoom or a prime lens. Most street photographers you meet will probably swear by a prime (aka a fixed focal length lens) but plenty use a zoom lens too. There are pros and cons to both. 

A zoom lens will give you versatility and will accommodate capturing a variety of scenes but that can add more decision making to your process. Conversely a prime lens can be restrictive as you can only zoom by using your feet but constrictions can often be great for creativity. 

If you’re a beginner then personally I recommend a kit zoom lens, you can get great shots with a kit lens. In fact I travelled through Japan and Korea just using the Fujifilm 18-55mm kit lens and one of the photos from that trip was a finalist in a street photography competition, so bear that in mind if you constantly hear you have to use a prime lens to make good street photos. You don’t. 

This photo was a finalist in the Independent Photographer Street Photography competition - taken with the Fujifilm 18-55 kit lens

If you’ve got a zoom but you’re thinking about getting a prime lens you can look through your catalogue of photos taken on your zoom lens and see if you tend to shoot around a similar focal length most often, that will then help you decide what focal length you use most to pick up a prime lens. I did that and found that I was taking most of my photos around 50mm, so that’s why I first picked up a 50mm prime lens.

Most street photographers I know use prime lenses. Prime lenses are fast, meaning they have a larger aperture to bring in more light which is helpful for low-light photography, they are smaller which is much less noticeable on the street and also you get used to seeing in one focal length which means you can capture a moment really fast and that’s so valuable when things happen in a split second on the street. So let’s talk about prime lenses.

I should mention that when I’m referring to focal lengths in the rest of this post I’m referring to the full frame equivalent. For example on my Fujifilm crop sensor cameras, when I say 50mm I’m referring to the Fujifilm 35mm lens because the equivalent view of the 35mm lens on a crop sensor camera is actually 50mm.

Right so lets get into the best focal lengths for street photography.

Prime Lenses

50mm:

Let’s start with the nifty 50. This lens is one of the best lenses for beginners and experienced street photographers because it’s not too close in but also not too far away. It doesn’t require you to get too physically close to your subjects either so it can definitely help with confidence when first starting out. This focal length also has some compression, compression meaning on longer focal lengths the foreground and background appear closer together than in real life, the longer the lens the more apparent this becomes. So with that bit of compression in a 50mm lens it can be great for more abstract street photography or when wanting to include some of the environment to conceal parts of an image or to use for creative framing. 

When I went to Morocco last year I only took my 50mm lens and that’s it. I knew people don’t really like being photographed there, so I wanted to make a project focusing more on the colourful environments of Morocco anchored by the people that live there. I hadn’t used a 35mm lens much before this trip and I knew a longer lens wouldn’t work to capture those winding alleys, so I went with the 50.

If I went back to Morocco I’d definitely be using my 35 too now I’ve got some experience with it, but just having the one 50mm lens for that trip meant I was restricted and had to be creative which was fun, at times frustrating, but then also resulted in a coherent body of work and a project I’m really happy with and you can see more of the work from that trip here if you like.

Taken on the Fujifilm 35mm f/2 (50mm full-frame equivalent)

So the 50mm lens is a really good all-rounder lens especially if you’re just starting out or want to have more clean less cluttered photographs taking advantage of the compression, but after my trip to Morocco I’d become increasingly interested in getting closer and making more subject driven street photographs and you can see the start of my journey using the 35mm focal length in this video on YouTube.

So next let’s talk about what is now my favourite focal length: 35mm.

35mm:

The 35mm lens I would say is probably the gold standard lens for street photography, not too wide, not too narrow, a great all rounder choice for capturing street scenes. It’s not so wide that you have to get super close to subjects, but also not too narrow so that you can include more elements in your frame. 

I found it a real challenge when I first picked up a 35mm lens but after a while of using it consistently I learned to see in that focal length and now I love it and it lives on my camera. My work really started to change when I switched to 35mm and that is the power that using different focal lengths has. It may or may not be the same for you, but the way I see things I visualise scenes in the focal length that I’ve been using regularly. 

I do think it’s important to experiment with focal lengths though, I bang on about experimenting all the time on this blog and on my YouTube channel, because I think it’s the best way to grow as an artist. When I started shooting in 35mm, my style, or at least the kind of images I’m looking to make, changed. Some of you might prefer my work on 50mm and some might prefer 35mm, but ultimately I want to photograph what interests me, and if anyone likes it too then that’s a bonus. That’s definitely the approach I recommend taking yourself - just photograph what interests you and choose the best tool to help you do that, in this case the focal length you want to experiment with.

Taken on the Fujifilm 23mm f/2 (35mm full-frame equivalent)

So yeah if you want an all round lens which was the favourite of some of the masters of street photography then you can’t go wrong with 35mm. You can get closer to the action and make layered images and you can also step back to capture more of the environment and context. But if you find 35mm a little too wide and 50mm a little too close then that’s where the next focal length comes in.

40mm:

So to be honest the 40mm lens is not one I’ve ever used. I went from 50 to 35 and that worked for me, but I’ve heard that the 40mm focal length works really well for street as it’s sort of the best of both worlds between 35 and 50. You can also often pick up these lenses cheaply and in a pancake format meaning they have a really small form factor, perfect for being unnoticed on the street.

However when I first started out with street photography sometimes I wanted to be further away from my subjects, especially at night, and also create more abstract work, so that’s what we’ll focus on next.

75mm (or longer):

Some people will tell you that you can only use a 35mm or 28mm lens to make the best street photography but that is total rubbish. Using a focal length of around 75mm or longer can make for some amazing photos on the street but the approach will be a bit different. Using a longer lens like this will mean there’s a lot of compression and you’ll be standing a lot further away, so it’s great for capturing candid portraits of people but also using it to incorporate the environement more for abstract photos as well.

Using a 75mm lens really helped me build my confidence on the street so if you’re not that confident yet, it might be worth considering. Also if you prefer a more fine art approach to street photography and you enjoy capturing textures and details on the street, then you might want this kind of focal length in your kit. 

Taken on the Fujifilm 50mm f/2 (76mm full-frame equivalent)

Now we’ve explored using a longer lens with a narrow field of view let’s talk about a wide angle lens.

28mm:

The 28mm lens is a classic for street photography, probably most notably used by one of the all time street photography greats and inspiration to so many, Gary Winogrand. I’ve never used a 28mm lens because in my street photography journey so far I started off being more into abstract and minimal images and always struggled to fill the frame but recently I’ve become more and more interested in the 28mm focal length and what I might be able to capture with it.

So why would you want to use a 28mm lens?

Well it’s a wide field of view so if you want to include a lot in your frame, fill it up with subjects with a more documentary approach, then this could be the right lens for you. For a more layered approach where you fill the frame though it means you need to get a lot closer to your subjects to make it work or else they look too small in the photo. If you want to get right into the action yourself and give a real immersive view then consider a 28mm.

That way of doing street photography is a lot more suited to really busy built up areas in my opinion like the centre of a big city. Having said that you can definitely use a 28mm lens in a more minimal way showing more of the environment, perhaps using figures and silhouettes to show the expanse of the environment in that more fine art approach.

I feel like the rule of thumb is if you find yourself constantly cropping on most of your photos, you’re either standing too far away and would benefit from getting closer to your subjects, or the style of photography you want to do would benefit from a tighter lens. 

Taken on the Fujifilm kit lens (at 28mm)

Why Lens Choice Really Matters

As we’ve talked about in this post, the lens choices you make will have a big impact on the kind of street photography you want to do. If you want to document life and get close in to the action you might want a 28mm or 35mm lens, if you want an all round lens with a bit of compression, maybe a 40mm or 50mm lens would be best for you. And if you want to capture more abstract details from further away, perhaps a longer lens would suit your style.

Regardless of what lens or lenses works for you I definitely think getting used to photographing in one focal length for a solid period of time will give you the best chance of improving how you make photographs. If you’re constantly changing up lenses it’s hard to get into the flow of things. At least try to only take one lens with you when you go on a photo walk.

As for cheap entry level lenses or expensive pro lenses for street photography it really doesn’t matter, the quality of your lens is unlikely to affect the outcome of your photos. Though it’s worth thinking about the other benefits of a more expensive lens such as build quality, size and potential weather sealing.

This is just my approach though, you don’t just have to have one lens, you can pick and choose. If you’re travelling, one focal length might be better suited to the environment you’re in than another. 

So which focal length is right for you? Well it really comes down to the kind of work you want to make so check out this article next where I discuss what street photography actually is and some different types you can try yourself.