The 24mm has a couple of advantages that make it very suitable for street portraits & street photography. The angle allows enough canvas to create a photo story.

The lenses can focus at very close distance, making it easy to shoot portraits up close. And most of the time, at wide open, they create a very nice muted background that does not distract the viewers’ attention.

These street photos & portraits were taken in various parts of New York City & I have known many of them with time. The street portraits include those of Joel, Alysha, Lucas, Eddie Rapp on his fiddle, Marc, Brian Vinson on his bass, Leonardo Love on his saxophone & Anthony Southgate with his guitar among others.

These photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D200 with occasional usage of Nikon Professional Speedlight systems & professional wide angle Nikon lenses including the 24mm Nikon street photographers lens! The images are displayed as they were taken without any digital manipulation except to reduce their size & resolution.

If you need high resolution copies please contact us with the usage details.

There are a few things to consider when choosing the right kind of low light photography lenses. While cost is a big part of the consideration for amateur photographers, the quality of photos & the ease of use come in next.

I always carry a few of these professional quality lenses in my street photography camera bag at all times. Most of them are extremely light and does not really add anything to the weight that I have to haul around on street photo shoots.

The photos of the Millennium Park in Chicago & the man crossing the street at night are taken close to midnight in Chicago, IL and makes use of the ambient light only. The camera was handheld & there were no filters or post processing done for any digital corrections. I used the Nikon 35mm f1.4G lens & the Nikon 50mm AF f1.8D lens for these low light situations.

The photo of the casino in Reno, CA was taken past mid-night while people were returning to their home after the New Year’s celebration in 2008. This one uses an external Nikon speedlight flash to accentuate the snow flakes.

The last photo is that of the tram cars in San Francisco, CA taken handheld with a Nikon 17 – 35mm f2.8 wide angle zoom lens.

Being a street photographer & shooting candid street subjects & street portraits is not an easy job. You have to be extremely fast with your camera & be able to determine the look of the final street photo even before you click the shutter.

10 Tips for Great Street Photos & Street Portraits

1. Get the Right Street Photography Camera, Lens & Flashes – equipments are very critical to the art form. While I never advise on spending tons of money on buying fancy gears, you need to have the cameras, lenses & the speedlight flashes that perform.

I have a shortlisted the essential professional gears for street photography that I use along with an extensive list of cameras & lenses for a wide variety of professional photography.

2. Use the Right Lens & the Best Street Portrait Lens – any professional photographer would tell you that the most important photo gear in their camera bag are the lenses. While individuals may have their preferences, I am comfortable using Nikon prime lenses for most of the street photography.

The time of the day you shoot & the way the light & the shadows play in the location you shoot also make it necessary to have the right lens. I have shortlisted the most important Nikon Street Photography & Street Portrait Lenses that I always carry with me.

3. Using Speedlight Flashes for Street Photos – the modern speedlight flashes are excellent tools to add creativity to your photography. While they add that spot of light to make portraits come alive with a catch light in your subject’s eyes, the correct use of flashes would also help you balance the tone in unevenly lit situations.

I have rarely used flashes in the dark! On the other hand, I have almost always used professional Nikon flashes in bright well lit days especially for street portraits.

4. Connecting with your Subject – a photo is just a photo unless your viewers are able to relate to your subject. When photographing people on streets, you could only get the best expression from your subject when they participate in building the photo. The best street photos are the ones where the photographer has successfully connected with the subject.

5. Building a Story with Photos – the famous National Geographic photographer & writer Bill Allard said that as a photographer he does not have the ability to bring in sound or motion & hence he has to build a complete story purely out of lights & shadows.

Each & every photo of such famous portrait photographers tell a story that viewers easily relate to & immediately connect with the emotions. I try out various angles, various DoFs while talking to my subject on the streets. Many times, I talk to them after I review the photos & take their opinions on which street photos & portraits to finally keep & which ones to throw away.

6. Choosing the Subject for a Great Street Portrait -

Subjects for street portraits or candid street photos are not random. They are carefully picked & chosen to fit the exact image that you are trying to create. A great subject for portrait are those with distinctive looks & high degree of expressions either through their disposition or their action.

7. Taking Care of the Background – the most complex part of a great street photo is an even, non-distracting background and possibly a bokeh where possible. A properly handled background makes the subject pop out & help you create a great street photo.

To get a subdued background in a street photo or a street portrait, you could be using a very fast lens that usually have very shallow depth of field obscuring the background. A telephoto lens also helps create a very even, muted background but adds to the challenge of a longer minimal focusing distance.

8. Shooting Handheld or Using a Tripod – I would advise you to use a tripod always. However, using a tripod in street photography is extremely challenging, especially when people would be moving around & you would have a flick of a moment to take the picture.

Agility is a great asset to street photographers – being able to get to the right spot, anticipating the behavior and be able to move around fast. Some modern tripods are designed out of carbon fibers & are very light, however, they still could become a problem when you have to move through crowds or subways.

9. Color Street Photography or Street Photos in Black & White – this is the most common question I face from street photographers, whether to do them in color or black & white. I have written up my take on that in Color or Black & White Street Photography along with my recommendations.

10. Improving your Street Photos & Street Portraits – there are 2 ways to improve on your street photos & street portraits to make them better. One is always to share them with the subject if possible & take their feedback. For most of the street portraits that you see on ProPhotography101.com, the subjects were able to review them & send in their comments that have helped me to do a better job on the next street photo.

The second way is to take a variety of photos and review which ones stand out. This would also help you refine your techniques & make a better choice of subjects going forward.

These street photos & street portraits are of low resolution created specifically for this website. If you need high resolution digital files or fine prints, please contact us by email.

Pets that age are always very active and you could get some very exciting photos of your pets in action if you have the patience to wait them out. A fast wide angle lens, preferably a fixed one, in the range of 17 – 35mm, 35mm fixed lens or a 50mm fixed lens would be ideal for photographing pets in action.

Tips on Taking Pets in Action Photos

• position yourself so that you can cover a wide area
• hold the camera quite low so that you could get the best angle to shoot – the pet’s eye level
• you could use a fixed focus on a manual mode with a large depth of field or use the AF mode in Continuous Focus mode to get the sharpest image
• use a high shutter speed to freeze the action – usually speeds over 60 works fine

If you are used to photographing with a remote shutter release, you could set up the camera on a low tripod or a cushion and shoot from the hip. The pet action photos shown here are taken with a handheld Nikon D200 set in a manual focus mode in natural ambient light conditions.

The Nikon 50mm f/1.8D is a normal lens & is a great professional portrait lens both on full frame cameras as well as on Digital SLR cameras with a sensor crop (on a 1.5x crop this lens become 130mm approximately).

Compared to the other professional Nikon portrait lenses the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D is suitable for handheld photography. The wide aperture makes it possible to shoot in very low light and in indoor poorly lit conditions handheld without appreciable camera shake.

The gallery here shows the performance of this great low light normal lens in indoor conditions. These pet portraits are done with a handheld camera using the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens in manual mode. The lighting is artificial however no flashes were used during the shooting.

The metering was set on spot. Even though these pet portraits were done in manual focus mode, the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D pro lens performed equally well in AF mode even in very low indoor lighting conditions without the need for any focus assistance.

These pet photos are displayed as they were shot without any digital manipulation except to reduce their size to make them easily display on this website.

Even though you’ve heard it probably a zillion times that it is not the camera or the lens, it is the photographer who makes a brilliant professional photo, the truth is, every art has it’s own gears to perfect the style. In photography too, you need the right Professional Photography Lenses to create stunning images right off the camera.

List of Professional Photography Lenses

• Read the list of Professional Photography Lenses I use in the Camera & Gears section
• Instead of buying a “cheap glass” for now hoping to buy the “best lens” later on, save the money and buy the best lens, otherwise you would end up with a ton of cheap lenses
• Cameras change every 2 years & ever more frequently now that the digital photography technology is evolving at lightspeed, professional lenses last for decades – they just become costlier every day. So it is wiser to spend money on Professional Photography Lenses than on cameras
• Clean your lenses after you come back from a photo assignment. Dust, sand, smoke, grease, fumes and sheer heat affects the lenses more than what the eye could see
• Use a lens protector, like an UV filter, or plain glass filter when shooting & use a lens cap with silica gels when you are not using the lens
• Always buy the brand name (Nikon / Nikkor lenses in my case)

Although any professional lens could be used in any situation, to get the best possible impact, you need to focus on 3 types of Professional Photography Lenses (shown in the chart, courtesy of scienceandart.org).

1. Professional Nature Photography Lenses (including landscape photography) – wide angle lenses in the range of 16/17mm – 50mm. Since you would be using them at high aperture settings of f/8 and above, a slow lens would work as great & you could save quite a lot of money when you buy a slow one

2. Professional Street Photography Lenses (including low light photography) -  you need a lot of speed and lenses with very low prime aperture is the best (f/1.4 onwards). They are also the most expensive in their category, but this is always the main difference between an amateur photographer and a professional photographer. Pro street photography requires fast, tack sharp, low dispersion, low distortion lenses

3. Professional Travel Photography Lenses – weight is the main thing to look out for when you are into professional travel photography. The most preferred lenses for pro travel photography ranges from wide angle to around 135mm for great portrait photography. Pro travel photographers also prefer to use very fast lenses especially for low light photography.

You always need to practice for months to get adjusted to a new lens. Take hundreds of photos till you can predict the image in any condition without having to experiment in the field.

Holding the camera steady is as important for macro as for any other type of photography, so a steady camera is one of the foremost professional tip for any handhold photography. That apart there are a few simple tips that could help you dramatically improve your macro photos.

Professional Tips For Handheld Macro Photography

• choose the right macro lens – though professional macro lenses are available from 60mm upwards, I personally prefer the Nikon Professional Macro 105mm or the 180mm lenses
• using a close up adopter like the Nikon 6T shallows the depth of field to give a great bokeh & a higher magnification
• since close up focusing tens to throw off metering, your final photo could have patches of dark areas unless you override the automatic exposure by 1 – 1.5 stops over and use a fill flash on TTL mode. Always use a professional speedlight flash
• off camera flashes or ring flashes produce better results than a flash attached to the camera’s hot shoe or the built in flash. I also prefer to use a flash bouncer or a flash diffuser for a more even illumination
• in close focusing distances, especially in the range or macro photography, automatic focus is often not accurate. I prefer to put the camera on a manual focus mode while shooting macro photos & limit the focus range with the Limit switch on professional Nikon lenses
• if you are used to shooting only on automatic mode, I would recommend using the CF mode. The CF mode on the professional cameras use a Continuous Focus technology that always keeps the subject in sharp focus even if the subject moves

The last tip for great professional macro photography has to do more with the type of media. When shooting on film, like the Velvia Chrome films, you need to shoot a little under for the best saturation after processing. For digital media, I would suggest shooting at Normal Color mode and then change the saturation or contrast in a photo editing software if needed.

With these lenses you could take any type of photos in & around your home – family photos, kids’ photos, portraits of family members, action photos in your yard & even your pets’ photos.

A few examples in which these Nikon lenses are used at home & around the house could be found in Indoor Photography, Home Pet Photography & Portrait Photography. These lenses are also very suitable for macro photography in & around your home either by themselves or by using simple adopters on them.

These lenses are a small selection from the Pro Cameras & Gears information.

1. Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 Wide Angle Zoom – this is one of my favorite lens and I use it extensively for home photography as well as for street photography. This is a very fast & very sharp lens & can focus in very low light conditions indoors. The lens focuses very close but you need to be careful about the distortion around the edges that is typical at such wide angles.

2. Nikon 35mm f/1.4 Prime Lens & the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 Prime Lens – both are professional Nikon standard lenses & very suitable for almost any time of home photography – from simple portraits to photographing kids in action. This is also a very apt lens for wedding portraits since they resolve colors without aberration & have zero distortion.

3. Nikon 105mm f/2.8 Prime Lens – this is a multi-faceted lens and is very suitable for professional quality portraits as well as for macro photography in & around your home. There are 2 versions available for this lens, one with VR & the other without. For macro photography, you could attach a Nikon Close Up Adopter that could give your a very high magnification.

If you are only interested in photographing portraits, read my recommendation on Professional Portrait Lenses and all of them could be used for a wide variety of pro home photography as well.

Professional photographers routinely use wide angle lenses to get close to their subjects. Lenses like the Nikon 50mm, Nikon 35mm, Nikon 24mm are staple lenses in a professional street photographers’ camera bag.

Though fixed lenses are the best for any type of professional photography, the only Nikon Pro Photography Street Photo Lens that come close is the Nikon 24 – 70mm wide-normal zoom lens. This lens is a little heavy but is tack sharp at almost all aperture stops.

Wide angle lenses usually have a larger depth of field & can focus comparatively closer compared to normal lenses. Unless you are going ultra-wide, the 35mm or the 24mm lenses do not distort the perspectives as well. The minor vertical distortion can be easily avoided by adjusting the tilt of the camera body while taking the picture.

This image is shot with the Nikon 24mm at full aperture. I had to sit down on the snow to get the right tilt of the lens – as you can see the background trees are completely free of distortion. The image was desaturated in Adobe Photoshop.

The Nikon (or any manufacturer for that matter) have their special ways to name their lenses & lens hoods & accessories. Sometimes, for a beginner, the lens name & specification could be confusing since they come with a lot of acronyms.

Each lens has the entire lens specification printed on the lens barrel. They could tell you a lot of what the lens could do & how it fits into your requirements. This article explains how Nikon lenses are names & what each of the numbers or alphabets on the lens & the lens hood name mean for you.

Nikon Lens & Lens Hood Nomenclature

Nikon F- Mount – the way the Nikon lenses are fixed to the Nikon bodies, is called the Nikon F Mount. Any non-Nikon lenses have to be a similar F-Mount system to work with a Nikon camera body.

Nikon A Mount – the older Nikon bayonet mount lens type of lenses used on Pre-AI lenses. Nikon only makes F mount bodies now.

Pre-AI Lenses – Nikon Pre-AI lenses were made for the very early Nikon bodies till about 1980. These lenses do not work on any of the modern Nikon bodies.

AI Lenses – Nikon started making AI lenses from 1977. AI stands for Aperture Indexing. All AI lenses will work on any modern Nikon camera body but since AI lenses have different metering techniques, metering may not work on all Nikon camera bodies.

Versions of AI – AI-E (1979), AI-S (1982) and AI-P (1988). They are essentially the same to a current camera body as AI lenses, with the exception of AI-P, as it is has a CPU built into it for auto-focus bodies to transfer lens information to the camera.

Nikon AF Lenses – AF are auto-focus lenses & were released in 1986.

Nikon AF-D Lenses – released in 1992, adds distance information to the data supplied by the lens to the camera.

Nikon AF-I Lenses – the I stands for Integrated. These Nikon lenses have a coreless focus motor & was released in 1992. Most of the AF-I lenses had an aperture ring on the lens barrel & were thus the D Type lens.

AF-S Lenses – these are with Nikon Silent Wave Coreless Motors for auto focusing. These AF-S lenses were released by Nikon in 1996.

Nikon G Lenses – the G, stands for Gelded, is a mechanical modification in which the aperture ring is removed from the lens. The lens aperture can only be controlled from the camera body & hence the G type lenses can be used only on modern Nikon camera bodies.

Nikon ADR Lenses – ADR stands for Aperture Direct Readout. In these lens body combination, the aperture etched on the lens barrel can be seen through the camera viewfinder through the aperture readout on the view finder prism overhang.

Nikon IX Lenses – Nikon does not make them anymore. The IX lenses are for APS (Advanced Photo System) cameras & were meant for the Nikon Pronea series of cameras. These IX lenses do not work on 35 mm cameras.

Nikon ED Lenses – these are specialty lenses with an extra lens coating to minimize light loss. ED stands for Extra-low Dispersion of light.

Nikon ASP Lenses – the ASP indicates the type of lens construction, the Aspherical type lens elements, that further reduces lens errors & aberrations.

Nikon C Lens or NIC Lenses – C indicates Nikon’s proprietary lens coating, called Integrated Coating, to reduce lens flare, light loss & aberrations.

Nikon CRC Lenses – CRC stands for Closed Range Correction & implies lenses with construction that can focus at very close distance, much like the macro lenses.

Nikon DC Lenses – De-focus Control lenses are designed to change the degree of spherical aberration in the out-of-focus areas to provide for better bokeh.

Nikon DX Lenses – released in 2003, these digital camera specific lenses are designed to work on less than full frame sensors in Nikon DSLR cameras. These lenses are designed to eliminate light aberrations on the edges of the sensors by covering the smaller image circle of the digital camera bodies.

Nikon FX Lenses – released in 2007 the FX type of lenses indicate Nikon Lenses that work perfectly well on film cameras or 35mm full frame digital cameras.

Nikon IF Lenses – IF stands for Internal Focusing system, in which the outer barrel of the lens does not turn while the lens tries to focus itself.

Nikon N Lenses – this is not really a single lens type but N indicates the Nikon’s proprietary Nano coating, a special nano-crystal lens coating for reducing lens aberrations and light loss.

Nikon NIC Lenses – similar to the Nikon N terminology, NIC stands for Nikon Integrated Coating, a special lens treatment with a proprietary coating to reduce lens flare and aberrations.

Nikon SIC Lenses – Super Integrated Coating, a multi-layer flare reduction coating, usually applied to the more complex zoom lenses.

Nikon PC Lenses – PC stands for Perspective Control in which the front of the lens to be shifted relative to the rest of the lens to correct for perspective. All PC lenses are either AI or AI-P in type.

Nikon RF Lenses – RF indicates Rear Focusing lens & means that lens achieves focusing by moving the rear elements.

Nikon SWM Lenses – SWM stands for Silent Wave Motor & this is the motor in the lens used in AF-I and AF-S lenses.

Nikon UW Lenses – UW implies Under Water lenses & designed for the Nikonos under water camera systems.

Nikon VR & VR II Lenses – Vibration Reduction lenses that corrects for camera movement during exposure. VR function only works on post F5 cameras & the modern Nikon cameras after 2005.

Nikon Lens Hood Nomenclatures