Shoot candid street shots

Capturing candid but sharp shots of strangers is a tough technical skill. Adam Waring explains how zone focusing can yield better street shots

Use discreet techniques to take people shots in busy areas

When you’re shooting on the streets, being subtle is everything. If you want true candid shots of people who are unaware of your presence, they will also need to be unaware of your big camera. Holding a DSLR right in front of your face shows subjects that you’re photographing them, but how else can you snap images?

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to use zone focusing to capture sharp street shots. With zone focusing, you switch to manual focus, set your lens to a predetermined distance and shoot subjects when they fall into this range of focus. The technique is ideal if you hold the camera at hip-level and don’t look through the viewfinder. Pre-focusing enables you to take pictures with greater accuracy and speed (without alerting those interesting street subjects to your presence).

While older lenses tend to have markings on them that aid zone focusing, you can easily work out the shooting distance yourself. To determine the focus range (and change it) you’ll need to know the focal length of your lens, the aperture and the intended subject distance. Fortunately the method is much less complicated in practice than it sounds. You can use an app such as DoF Table to work out all the distances for you.

This technique takes time to master, so don’t expect sharp shots straightaway, but once you’ve bagged some keepers, boosting the colours or converting to monochrome adds the finishing flourish.

Switch to manual focus, set a lens to a predetermined distance and shoot subjects when they fall into this range of focus