I still find it difficult to do street photography, and I've been trying for a few years now. Give me a landscape or an empty building and I forget all about time. Nevertheless, the photographs that I like best from other photographers are those of people.

It's just that it's difficult not to feel self-conscious taking photographs in public. The other day, walking through Inverness looking for the fleeting subject, I saw the play of light on a derelict (as they all seem to be) hostel across the street. I hesitated as usual, but then I caught sight of another photographer a few paces away raising his big black DSLR to his eye and thought "while he's doing that no one will notice me", so I quickly got my camera out (a little Dynax 5) and took a couple of shots. Imagine my surprise when I read this lovely piece of writing by Adam Marelli posted on the Leica Camera Facebook wall: http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2011/05/leica-rangefinder-for-street-photo...

Here's an excerpt where he's writing about that same experience: "In order to catch candid moments, I don’t need to be invisible, I just have to be less obvious than the people around me." …fantastic insight.

I still have to send off that film for processing, but here's one I took a while back –

Abridged quote from AP on their website, highlighting an article comparing Nikon, Sony and Pentax cameras with the same 16.2 megapixel sensor unit: "Most photographers believe that the sensor is the most important factor in image quality…"

I hope the point is made that the lens is very likely the most important factor, as I came across a surprising result when comparing cameras recently.

A few weeks ago, a friend bought a Nikon D7000 with the 18-105mm kit lens. We went out on a shoot on the first sunny day to give it a run through. I took along my Sony A200 and most of the day I was using a manual focus Minolta 50mm 1:2 MC Rokkor (the 'kit' lens from my SRT100x bought 34 years ago) which I have adapted to fit the Alpha mount. We both agreed that the pictures I got looked better than those from the Nikon setup (both sets of images converted from RAW). My friend was disappointed and, as it was so unexpected, I was slightly embarrassed.

However, this now leaves me in a quandary about upgrading my 10Mp A200 to the 16Mp Sony A580, which I've been thinking of doing: it won't be worth spending a load of money if it doesn't noticeably improve the picture quality.

All images: Sony A200, Minolta MC Rokkor 50mm 1:2, f8.

I've been using the Sony DT 18-70 a bit more recently, as it really is quite good – and so versatile, being light to carry, with a good range of angle-of-view and useful close focusing. There's a little bit of decentreing visible when set at 24-28mm, but it's at short focusing distances that it really shines. Viewed at full size, this image is scaled to fit a 23" Apple Cinema display at 100ppi. Although not an exact science, I find this gives a fair impression of what an image will look like as an A3 print.
Shot at ISO 800 on a Sony A200 set at 'Landscape' creative style and a sharpness of +2.

All photographs on Ektar 100. Minolta X-300, MD Rokkors 45mm f2 and 135mm f3.5