Street photography is a genre of photography which focuses on catching people in "candid" moments in street settings. That seems to be the official line, anyway. I don't know if anyone's ever set out a working definition of it. 

Another official line is that street photography is shot with a small camera, so as to avoid being detected or seen by the people you shoot.  Most people will tell you that a rangefinder (Henri Cartier-Bresson) or even a compact camera (Daido Moriyama) is best for this kind of photography.

So, just to be perverse, here are some "street" shots taken with one of the least appropriate cameras for the job. My latest (and quite possibly last, given how much it cost) camera, the Nikon D3S.

To cut a long story short, I've always wanted one camera that ticked every box that I wanted ticked. I shoot just about everything - I'm not a specialist - so I wanted something with a lot of flexibility. I used to have a Nikon D3 which ticked almost every box except for a very important one : sensor cleaning. I would have to take it to the Nikon service centre every few months to get the dust and dirt off the sensor. Well, the D3S has sensor cleaning, and one other thing: superior high ISO performance to the D3.

If you're not up on camera technobabble, then "superior ISO performance to the D3" is like saying "better than what is already incredibly good". The D3, when it came out in 2007, it was quite the revolution in terms of how it handled low light. People went out and shot it at what were then (and are still to a degree now) extremely high ISO levels and got away with it. The D3S then took that even further. 

I shoot scenery. The D3S can do scenery fine; it has a full frame sensor so wide angle lenses are true wides. I shoot action and sports. The D3S has lightning fast autofocus and shoots at 9 FPS (you can even jack it up to 11 with a penalty in resolution), so it is practically perfect for action and sports. I shoot portraits. The D3S is more than acceptable for these. I shoot cityscapes. No problem for the D3s. I rarely shoot video, but the D3S has that too (not particularly special video in terms of technical specs, but passable). I shoot at night. The D3S still, even now, matches the newest DSLRs for low light and high ISO.

Of course it's a big thing and weighs something like a small car, but that's the price for being to shoot pretty much anything, anywhere, at any time.

There will be more to come, but for now here are some "street" shots, mainly converted to black and white because while the D3S has excellent colour rendition, I don't know of a single camera which can take great colour shots at night. Those street lights do weird things to your white balance and I'm shooting in JPEG fine.

The first one was taken in the morning, in colour, and it looked pretty good. However it involved shadows and light, and they often look good in B/W as well. So here are both.

Everything from here on in was at night (well, evening, but it was dark). Question for Japanese speakers: do you think that 皮フis a sign of consideration for people who can't read 皮膚 or more simply a sign of how nobody can read kanji anymore?

Floating lady

Just sit down and chill out

On the phone

Street musician

On the phone version 2

Taxi driver

Not really street photography, more like station photography, but I love those trousers

Chatting, waiting for the train

Thanks for looking!