Serious Street Shooting...

You wanted to do some street shooting? With a serious piece of German equipment? Metal-bodied German equipment? Well, l have we found the item for you...*

Before you go off and start calculating trajectories and windage, you might want to go out and take some pictures of the target...errr, I mean subject. With a camera. We can recommend several right now.

The Leica M, the Monochrome, and the ME are three good choices for street work. They do not whir and stutter as they focus ( unless you do...) and they can be whipped up to the eye for a quick shot rather than being held at arm's length like so many compact cameras. The lenses are exceedingly sharp and the rest of the electronics are very reliable. They cost a bomb - but this actually contributes to your success as a street shooter. If you cannot really afford one but have sold enough of your relatives to buy it the cost makes you a VERY careful worker - conversely if money is no object you can afford to be bold and go to the exciting places where you get beaten up and robbed. Either way the pictures are interesting.

If you can afford several Leica lenses, or a Learjet, or coffee in Subiaco, you can also get one of the Billingham bags to contain the system. After that you needn't contain yourself at all - the world is your oyster** and nothing can stop you.

For the less well heeled - but still aesthetically wise - the Fuji company makes the Fuji X-Pro1, the X-E1, the X-100s, and the X-20 . The first three are interchangeable lens cameras and the last two subsist with fixed optics. ALL of them produce superb files and the smaller ones have the advantage of being compact to boot. All have viewfinders on the northwest corner of the body and all will do an LCD view as well for close-ups. Again a series of discrete cameras that do not call attention to you during riots, unless you use them as flails.

The last choice - Canon - is more commonly seen. The G15 and G1X cameras have the street shooter's needs covered and have swivel screens as well - you can poke the camera around a corner with the screen swivelled so that you can compose out of the main stream of bullets. A valuable ability, and soothing to the nerves.

Of course, this may not be what you are looking for. You may wish the raw edgy hint of danger or at least the ridicule of the natives after 1:00 AM. Each to their own, but at least with these three families of cameras you can bring back some nice snaps of it.

* SMS EMDEN main armament captured in WWI. Mounted in a Sydney park. Only fires during the Mardi Gras.
** And a wet, slimy blob of a world it is too.