You’re right about the practice but it also takes a bit of courage to get close enough for good shots. People also seem to respond quite differently to my Zorki-4 than my D40. The Sigma 30mm with aggressive looking lens hood probably doesn’t help on that front.

Most of the time that I’m outside trying to get street photos I’ll be with my camera prefocused. As I most often use a prime lens I will have rather good idea of what exactly is in frame and out of it before I look in the viewfinder. Then it’s a matter of grabbing the moment by lifting the camera to my eye, checking the composition and snap off the photo.

Sounds easy but it is damn hard. To me anyway

@Kalli: I have no problem courage-wise getting in close, but what does give me issues is that if I get too close, people notice that I’m trying to photograph them, and then they insist on looking right into the lens and grinning like maniacs, or waving or giving a peace sign or something equally idiotic… which is of course exactly what I’m trying to avoid. At that point it’s difficult to tell them to stop acting like clowns and ignore me. This is why I like shooting from the hip, because you can get right up close and no one even knows you’re taking pictures.

Also, the shutter on the Nikon is quite noisy, and that draws attention, also. People hear a shutter click, and they instinctively turn around to see who’s taking pictures and of what. I prefer to be the silent photo warrior.

@ Melissa: You could do what I do for those candid shots, set it on rapid fire and shoot away. Just delete what does not come out. It is a bit like Russian roulette, but you get some great chance shots that way. I actually do that on my Cannon SD1000 point and shoot.

If the Nikon is a digital SLR, does it have a function to mute the shutter noise since the “shutter” is really not there anymore?

@Matt: I played around with the rapid fire thing the other day, and found that the only way not to get a blurry shot was to hold the camera completely still (which kind of defeats the purpose). I need to figure out why it’s not automatically choosing a faster exposure and/or higher ISO when it needs to. I’m sure it’s some setting – the Nikon menus are confusing.

I’m actually surprised that you said there is no physical shutter, because although that makes perfect sense, I can feel the slight vibration of the click as well as hearing it, which made me think there was in fact some moving part involved. I’m going to dig through the manual and see if I can shut that clicking off.

@ Melissa, I was going off the fact that it is digital. If it is digital, then it really has no technical need for a shutter. The digitizer or what ever it is called does not work like exposure film. Unless, it is designed that way to allow the tactile feel of a real SLR. I never really played with the digital version. Now regular SLRs, well that is another story.

My digi SLR is a Canon.
There is a silent mode on it.
You should have one too.
And when I want to catch people on the sly, I stand back, and zoom in as close as I can, and then later, in a photo-shop type program, crop in even closer.

That is the great thing about digital, you still get a pretty good picture with your post-editing.

@Matt @Shaunte: right, today I’m going to figure out how to do this. Stand by.

Okay guys, it looks like I was right – my camera does have a silent mode, but it only silences the menu beeps and the focus beep (which I actually like and want to keep on). According to what I’m reading, all DSLRs (unlike digital point-n-shoots) do have a physical shutter that clicks, and that can’t be prevented from doing so due to the nature of CCDs (meandering discussion that starts with a misunderstanding of the question here). Apparently the mirror is actually responsible for most of the noise and the movement I can feel, but that’s tomayto/tomahto as far as my issue is concerned.

So it looks like I’m stuck with it… will learn to deal.

So a digital SLR still does the flippy thing with a mirror… You’d think with technology today they would have figured out how to eliminate that moving part. I guess you will have to employ a diversion in order to get those special candid shots.