Street Photography with the Ricoh GR iii (Patreon)

As promised, here are the photos I took today with the Ricoh GR iii. 

A few times a year, my wife and I go to this flea market in Montreal called "Le Marché aux Puces St-Michel". I told myself this was the perfect occasion to do some street photography and testing out the Ricoh's capabilities. This camera was pretty much made for this. 

I was actually planning to do this project a few years ago, wanted to do this on film, but I wasn't too prepared and didn't have the right technique anyway. Going in there with a 35mm while hand focusing is just not the best idea. Also I didn't have the guts to approach boomers and ask them if I could take their portraits. Today I was in stealth mode, I was sorta holding the camera between my fingers, kinda like this dude:

But I was pressing it against my chest, sort of like I was just holding it there but triggering with my thumb. My camera settings going in were ISO3200, f/4ish and around 1/125th to 1/250th of a second. My auto focus was set at select AF, but the Ricoh has this nice focus mode called Snap Focus Distance, where you set the focus between 1 to 5m which is activated when you press the shutter all the way down one shot instead of half way pressing. This is very cool and is just made for street shooting. I was switching from 1 to 2m and going back to the alleys. I used the regular AF focus when I could. The Ricoh doesn't have any viewfinder, I still sometimes have the reflex to put it up to my face like an idiot. 

The trick was to talk to these people and make them think I was interested in their stuff, although sometimes I really was because I still bought a few things, so I was taking pics blindly that way.

The shutter is also so silent that you barely hear anything. Very few where looking at the camera and I feel they knew I was taking pictures, but maybe they just let it slide.

The main thing I found interesting over there was the amount of stuff some booth have, it's such a heavy interesting mess. On some shots you almost have to look twice before you actually find the person amongst all that stuff and that's where I think I succeeded imo.

I also went all b&w for the classic film look, emulated the look of IlFord Delta 3200.

Are these perfect? Not at all. Most of these were taken ninja style, I didn't really know what I was composing, but I feel that's the beauty of it, it's mostly about the experience over the results. Also covid masks everywhere are bumming me out big time. Later on, my wife told me that I could have just asked them if they wanted me to take their portrait, thus asking to remove the mask for it, but that in it's own takes balls plus the removal of the mask is another story. Maybe I will try again someday in a proper manner to take their portraits when this covid bullshit is over, if it ever will be. 

I hope these posts can be interesting for some of you at least. I am making this available for the 2$ Thank You tier.  I want to try different things with this platform, of course I will always do collaborations with models don't worry, but project like these from time to time are good for me, and I said to myself why not share them. 

Thanks for reading and good night !