Key Takeaways
- Smartphone photography is less intrusive for street photos due to discreetness and less bulkiness.
- There’s less pressure when using a smartphone for street photography, leading to more casual and stress-free shots.
- Smartphone lenses have the perfect focal length for street photography and have no need to adjust settings or worry about memory cards.
I perform a lot of street photography with my DSLR and smartphone, and to be honest, I prefer taking pictures in this genre on my smartphone. There are several reasons why this is the case, and I’ll reveal the biggest ones today.
1 It’s Less Intrusive
One of my biggest fears when starting street photography was that I would be too intrusive. And even though I’ve been doing it for over five years, I still hate the idea of randomly pointing my lens in people’s faces. I prefer to be more discreet, which is where smartphone street photography comes into the frame.
By far the biggest advantage of taking street photos with your smartphone is that it’s a lot less intrusive than most DSLRs. Besides immediately drawing attention to the fact you have a camera, DSLRs are also often quite bulky. By comparison, you can hold your smartphone in your hand without many people noticing (unless you literally point it right in their faces, of course).
There are other things you can do to overcome your fear of shooting street photography besides using a small camera, such as using icebreakers.
2 There’s Less Pressure
Another thing I really like about shooting street photography on my smartphone is that there’s a lot less pressure. When I photograph with my camera, I often only focus on getting a great shot—this is clearly something I need to work on, but it’s also something I think that a lot of people deal with.
When shooting with my smartphone, I really don’t care how the pictures turn out. Most of the time, they’re just little collections for my scrapbook (read: Instagram). It’s probably because I don’t view my smartphone as a purpose-built camera that I feel this way, admittedly.
If you’ve found yourself worrying too much about how your pictures pan out, the best thing you can do is to just put your camera down and use your smartphone for a while instead. It’s one of the reasons I ditched my camera for my smartphone as a pro photographer.
3 Get Inspiration for What You Want to Photograph With Your DSLR
While I do prefer taking street photos with my smartphone, that doesn’t mean I dislike using my camera. One of my favorite weekend activities is picking up my camera and wandering around the streets of my city, capturing what’s going on. I will even sometimes book photography trips just to see what I can photograph in different settings.
With this in mind, one huge advantage of shooting with my smartphone is that it gives me inspiration for what I’d like to capture with my DSLR later. If I have my camera with me, I’ll sometimes take the picture there and then.
On other occasions, though, I’ll just wait and go out again with my camera at a later point. I like to keep a list of different ideas for when I’m feeling low on motivation or ideas, even if it takes me years to get around to them.
4 The Lens Is the Perfect Focal Length
Trying to determine the best focal length for street photography can be time-consuming and expensive in equal measure. I’ve experimented with multiple lenses, and to be honest, I really don’t like having a lot of photography equipment because it can quickly become cluttered.
With this minimalist approach in mind, one of the best things about taking street photos with a smartphone camera is that the lens is the perfect focal length. It’s wide enough to get everything in your shot, but narrow enough that you’ll have a clear focus in your images.
What’s also nice about using smartphone camera lenses is that they’re small enough to take street photos in narrow spaces.
5 You Don’t Need to Worry About Memory Cards
While on a trip to Norway in 2023, I took hundreds of photos that I was so excited to edit once home. However, I was distraught when realizing that my SD card had broken. While I could retrieve the JPEG files, the RAW ones were unsalvageable. I’m glad that it gave me the means to write a guide on what to do if your camera SD card isn’t working, but I would still prefer it hadn’t happened.
When capturing street photos on your smartphone, you don’t need to worry about your memory cards breaking. Sure, your battery might die—but getting a portable charger can help in this respect.
Some smartphones even have RAW file editing these days, meaning that you might even want to consider looking at buying one of these instead of a DSLR if you’re a casual photographer. I still suggest something more substantial if you’re aiming to become a pro, but if not, you might save yourself from a lot of stress.
6 You Don’t Have to Worry About Adjusting Multiple Settings
One of the worst things about photography is seeing a scene in front of you and thinking “that would have been an amazing photo if I was quicker”. When this happens to me, it’s almost always because I was messing around with different settings on my camera. For this reason, I pretty much exclusively shoot in Aperture Priority mode on my DSLR.
The good thing about taking photos with your smartphone is that you simply do not need to worry about this. While the limited features on a smartphone are sometimes annoying for photography, they’re also a blessing if you’re prone to tweaking camera settings.
When I photograph street scenes with my smartphone, I simply just capture the shot however I see it normally. This leads to better results; many of the small changes are either unnoticeable to most people or easy to change later in editing.
7 Quickly Share Photos With the People You Capture
I rarely go up to people and ask them if they would like me to take a picture of them, but I have had others ask if I could take photos. I always feel like it’s nice to share great images of others with them, and if you use your smartphone, the process is less time-consuming.
When using my camera, I first have to transfer the file to my phone (and let’s just say I’m not the biggest fan of Fujifilm’s camera app). I then have to send it to them after that. If I take a picture on my smartphone, it’s quick and easy to send something via AirDrop or an alternative method.
You might live in a place that’s more social than others, and if that’s the case, having your smartphone will help you transfer images more quickly.
While I enjoy street photography in general, I prefer to shoot with my smartphone. Besides being less intrusive, it’s also easier to carry a smartphone around, and I don’t have to worry about memory card issues or whatnot. I suggest starting with your smartphone and then upgrading if needed.
