street shooting : autofocus or manual ?

[jfhasson]

Hi everybody

In street shooting of people, one must be very fast. My main problem is focusing, I often get out-of-focus results, both with autofocus & manual.

My equipment is Nikon D50 + Nikkor AF 300mm. Should I upgrade ?

Advice welcome.

Thank you.

Jean-François.

[dang]

It would be helpful if you'd add links to shots that have efix that could be seen. Many times out of focus could mean too slow a shutter speed, or missing focus. First try upping the ISO, and be sure shutter speed is around double your mm of lens and see what happens. If you're shooting on auto, stop! Try shutter priority instead, long lenses are especially pron to shake. It's also good to shoot with a center point focus (or manual) so you'll know where the focus locks. Focus the subject keeping it locked, and then frame.

[johnfalky]

From experience, I would say that the main problem is your lens. Why have something this long for street photography? More than likely, even your heartbeat is shaking this thing. My recommendation is to drop the long lens go to something much much shorter and do real street photography.

[jfhasson]

Yes John, but what I love in street shooting is get a nice face that fills the whole photography. How do you do that without long lenses ?

[kuc]

Hmm.... Came up closer or if you have problem with that you always can crop your image using some software.
Besides shorter doesn't mean 10-22. Maybe you should consider lensens like for example 17-70 or something similar.