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Comment by oxalorg | Hacker News Reader

I have clicked about ~20,000 photographs on a Sony camera in the last year and a half. And I have published exactly 0 of those photos on social media.

Whenever I meet my friends and family, I show them the pictures myself and the story behind them.

I love the thrill of street photography and it gives me immense pleasure to capture candid moments of humans. It's a great creative outlet for me and helps me think about life and philosophy through my pictures.

Maybe one day I will care enough about publishing these pictures, maybe one day I will care about AI. But right now, I don't. This is the closest I've been to my "kid"-like self, just enjoying something for the heck for it.

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The pictures go with a story, that's the interesting part.

As someone who would love to get into street photography, and has an old NIkdon D7100, what would you recommend is a good lense (not model, but focal length, zoom, etc) for street photography ?

It all depends on what you want to do. If you want to get started cheaply the kit lens is more than enough.

Prime lenses will have larger apertures that can give you more creative options.

How close do you want to stand? Indoor/outdoors? What are you planning on taking pictures of? D7100 is APS-C, I find that 50mm (~75mm ff) on APS-C doesn't give you quite enough room indoors to take photos. So you might want a 35mm prime or a zoom that goes down there. If you're planning on taking portraits you don't want something too wide (~20mm and below can be good for real estate/architecture) because it makes people look weird.

Most everything else is dictated by how much you want to spend and how large/heavy you want your camera to be.

Personally I have a 35mm f1.8 on my camera and am happy with it, I use it for family outings, a lot of portrait-level shots and just general "hey we're at the museum" kind of photos.

I have a D7100 as well and a 35mm 1.8 and 20mm. Both are great. 35mm on APA-C is about 50mm on full frame and is the "natural" view. Generally too narrow for landscapes and streetscapes, the 20mm starts to be good for those.

You should try to rent a lens to see what works for you. I used lensrentals.com just to try out the 85/1.4 that "everyone" said was awesome. I loved it, but couldn't justify the price for a hobby, so I settled on the 85/1.8. I bought it years ago (4+) and I think I've taken less than 20 pictures with it. My "nifty 50" is still a favorite 50/1.8, but I also love the 70-300/4.5-5.6. Those two are my most used, and both were less than $600 US total.

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