I thought I'd do a 'what's in my bag' feature for all you gear heads out there. As you can see from the photo above, I actually have two street bags. The green Lowe Pro Terraclime 100 is a great bag that is just about perfect for a minimalist street shooter and is the bag that I used until I bought the iPad2. Why take an iPad on a street you might ask? I love the iPad for reading or writing if I stop for a coffee or if I'm on a train going to or from the city I'm shooting in. I can also load my photos in, edit them and have them in a blog post, ready to upload when I get to a WiFi spot. The Storm isn't a camera bag, but I really like the style and pukka feel to it, it's made of good quality leather and has a section in the front for my iPad and a zipped pocket inside for all my accessories.
My main camera is the Fujifilm X100. That little camera has quadrupled the amount of street photography that I do and I really believe it's one of the best cameras ever made. The Yashica Electro 35 GTN is my film rangefinder which has a 40mm fixed lens. At the moment it has a roll of Ilford Delta 400 loaded, but I want try out some Fuji Acros 100 film after seeing the results that Severin Koller had on some of the photos on his blog, including this one. The Casio FC100 is for a project that I'm working on at the moment and will be featured here on 35mmStreet some time soon.
Make sure you always take plenty of batteries (especially with the X100) and a spare memory card. I have an 8GB in the X100 and a 16GB as a spare. The 16GB would usually be in the camera, but with the latest firmware update there was a new bug that makes the camera boot up really slow when using a 16GB. Reformatting sorts the problem, but it returns after you take a few shots. Let's hope Fuji is working on a new firmware update that will fix the problem.
The Zoom H2 Audio Recorder is for recording ambient sound to use with slideshows or videos, but I'd like to use it for interviews some day. The Fuji flash never gets used for street photography, it's just a habit to always have a strobe in my bag.
That's about it. To be honest, I could go out without a bag and just have the X100 and/or the Electro 35 and a pocket full of batteries. It doesn't really matter what gear you have, even a point and shoot will get you good street shots. When I use my DSLR's on a paid job, I'm a sharpness freak, but when I shoot street it doesn't really matter too much. It's all about the content and the composition.
Gear List
Fufifilm X100 Yashica Electro 35 GTN (rangefinder) Casio FC100 (point & shoot) X100 Lens Hood 2 x X100 Batteries 16gb SD Card Lens Cloth Business Cards Storm Bag or LowePro Terraclime 100 iPad 2 & Charger iPad 2 Camera Connection Kit