12:17pm, Nara, Tomio.

Hi all,

Sorry it's been a while since I last sat down and wrote a blog post. Been pretty hectic since coming back from Taiwan, then rushing everything from work and preparing for Japan.

As of now where I'm writing this post from, it's Osaka.

Then once again, it's been a pretty crazy 3 weeks here rushing everywhere to reece for the locations for the music video which I've been tasked to shoot here, as well as getting stock photography and timelapses for myself.

But since today is a rainy day without much good sunlight, I decided to sit down and write something.

Street Photography; a topic which most of us are familiar with. And something which I really love, it makes me feel closer, if not, more connected to the world through my lenses.

There's been friends and clients who tend to ask me what is a good camera for travel, street photography etc. Seriously, I don't know. There's like millions of cameras made for compact travel, what matters is, you get the shot.

My setup for street photography is pretty simple.

1. RAW files; I desire the ability to control the shadows and exposures in post, because sometimes in order to get the shot I tend to under or overexpose.

2. Low-light capability; night street photography in Asian countries are gorgeous, and a definite plus for indoor shoots when sometimes dim lighting can be an issue.

3. Small and flat; I don't carry a standard camera bag, I like using my army sling bag which I bought from Hengchun camp 6 years ago. It's waterproof and (almost)indestructible. But the catch is, it was only meant to fit A4 sized papers and maps for outfield usage. So that means to say I need something that is flat enough.

That's probably the 3 main things I look out for in a travel street photography camera.

The rest are all luck and a little bit of skills.

The bad thing about me is I tend to stand out because of my tattoos, it's pretty darn obvious having tattoos on your forearms. As such, people tend to hide or run away if I bring out the big guns like 24-70, 16-35 etc. Plus, never been a fan of heavy weight lenses for travel unless it's for work or event coverage.

So, I found out about this little pancake called 40mm f2.8 STM. It fits excellently into my green army sling, and the 40mm is a pretty nice walkabout length on a 35mm. So a Canon 6D + 40mm pancake combo. And the STM makes focusing so silent that no one knows I'm snapping them.

Right now as of in Japan, the weather's pretty cold, so I can hide my tattoos and bring out my camera, looking like a plain tourist.

Set my aperture to f8, shutter speed to 1/100, and auto ISO(god bless).