Camera for Street Shooting

Guidenet wrote:

For starters, the D700 is miraculous in low light situations. You will get clean images where you didn't think it was possible. Add a dim light fast lens like a 50 f/1.8 or 50 f/1.4 and jokingly, you'll be taking pictures of black cats in warehouses at midnight.

I use 50mm fairly rarely compared to my other lenses and bought the 50 f/1.8 because it was a no-brainer $219. It's a little faster focusing than the f/1.4 model and has equal and some say slightly better IQ than the f/1.8 model. I find the 2/3rd of a stop it not be that relevant. For candids and street, I find the f/1.4 actually a little thin on the DOF for careful focusing on the eye and generally stop down to f/2 or f/2.8 which still has a pleasing out of focus area.

With the clean ISO ability of the D700, you'll find f/2.8 still out-performs other cameras in dim light.

To show you f/2.8, here's someone I took under a canvas awning on an overcast afternoon in May. I used the D700 and the 85 f/1.4 at f/2.8. The Bokeh is still creamy and the background is blurred.

Here's the same lens at f/5. Notice it still is blurred in the background but I wanted my granddaughter to be identifiable while my grandson to be sharp. Look behind my granddaughter and you can see the wall is blurred even more and that's f/5.

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Cheers, Craig

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