With the best lens for street photography, you shouldn't be thinking about your lens at all. This discipline is all about being reactive, immersing yourself in the moment, and as such, a good street photography lens only really requires two things.
One: it needs to be small. It should be unobtrusive, and avoid attracting attention the way a big zoom lens will. Also, since you're going to be carrying it around all day, your street lens should be nice and lightweight, since even with an extensively padded camera strap, if you carry a heavy lens around for more than a few hours, you'll feel it.
Two: it should sit within a relatively slim range of focal lengths. You want it to be wide, but not too wide, for the best street perspective. You want your lens to sit between 24mm and 50mm, as this gives you a reasonably naturalistic perspective while still allowing you to fit plenty in the frame.
So what's the perfect length? Generally, it's a 35mm prime lens. For decades, this has been accepted as the best lens for street photography and photojournalism, and this is one piece of received wisdom we're not going to argue with. If you're using full-frame then a 35mm lens is the ideal choice; for APS-C cameras, a lens of 24mm or so will give you an equivalent field of view, and on MTF cameras it is around 17mm.
Best lens for street photography in 2024
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Best street photography lens for Sony
A lot of Sony's premium zoom lenses are really rather big and heavy. For photographers who are getting sick of carting this hefty optics around, the firm has started producing a series of small, lightweight primes, and this one might be the most useful of them all. The Sony FE 40mm f/2.5 G bears a focal length a shade below "standard", which is extremely useful for street photography. It's a G Master lens, and optically it's pretty much faultless, with incredible sharpness throughout the aperture range, across the frame.
This lightweight lens is perfect to attach to your Sony camera and just walk around with for hours. The balance and feel is so much better than it is with the hefty zooms, and the autofocus is fast and accurate enough to catch pretty much anything. Sony has done a really impressive job here, and any Alpha-using street photographer should definitely make this lens a primary consideration.
Honorary mentions
Best street photography lens for Fujifilm
We're enthusiastic about the original Fujinon XF27mm lens for its remarkable slimness and exceptional edge-to-edge sharpness – qualities that make it an ideal choice for street photography.
This latest version maintains those high standards while introducing weatherproofing and a physical aperture ring, enhancing its appeal for capturing dynamic urban scenes. As a kit lens for the X-E or X-Pro ranges, it excels, offering portability and impressive sharpness.
Although Fujifilm's promise of a fast and silent autofocus motor didn't entirely meet expectations, this lens remains a top contender for street photographers seeking compactness and image quality that truly impresses.
Read our full Fujinon XF27mmF2.8 R WR review
Honorary Mentions
Best street photography lens for Canon RF
This 35mm prime for EOS R and RP cameras is conveniently compact. Its stepping motor autofocus system means there’s no focus distance scale or depth of field markings, which are often preferred for ‘zone focusing’ in street photography. However, a distance scale, focus peaking and focus guide options are all available in the shooting displays of Canon’s R and RP bodies. Both autofocus and manual focusing work wonderfully well when using these cameras’ electronic viewfinders or vari-angle rear screens.
Further highlights include a very short minimum focus distance that enables 0.5x macro magnification and a class-leading 5-stop hybrid image stabilizer that’s great for both regular and close-up shooting. Typical of RF lenses, an extra bonus is the customisable ‘control ring’ for adjustment of parameters like aperture, shutter speed, ISO and exposure compensation.
Image quality is simply stellar. The lens is super-sharp across the whole image frame and the vignetting that’s slightly noticeable at f/1.8 mostly disappears when narrowing the aperture to f/2. The small amounts of lateral chromatic aberration and barrel distortion can be fully corrected in-camera, and the hybrid image stabilizer lives up to its 5-stop billing. The macro facility is mostly superfluous for street photography but can nevertheless come in handy.
Read our full Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM review
Best street photography lens for Nikon Z
This Nikon Z-series lens is expensive for a 35mm street prime, despite it having a fairly modest f/1.8 aperture rating. However, it’s much more high-tech than Nikon’s F-mount AF-S 35mm f/1.8G ED, thanks to three aspherical elements and additional ED elements. It features both Super Integrated Coating and Nano Crystal Coat, for effectively minimizing ghosting and flare.
The stepping motor-based autofocus system is fast and virtually silent, while enabling very smooth and precise manual focusing via its electronically coupled control ring. When in autofocus mode, you can customize the function of the control ring. Typical of most stepping motor lenses, there’s no focus distance scale. However, directional focus assist lamps and a focus peaking option are available in Nikon Z 6 and Z 7 cameras.
Image quality is fabulous, with particularly stunning centre-sharpness. As with other Z-series lenses that we’ve tested, the relatively large-diameter mounting plate helps to enable superb image quality across the whole frame, while sharpness in handheld shooting is boosted by in-camera stabilization.
Read our full Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 S review
Best street photography lens for L-mount
Sigma's spoilt us with large and fast 35mm prime lenses recently, including the excellent 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art and the monster 35mm f/1.2 DG DN Art lenses. The new Sigma 35mm f/2 DG DN Contemporary, as the name suggests, is part of the company's ‘Contemporary’ line-up and sports a more compact and lightweight build.
Weighing in at just 325g, it still features a full metal casing (and there's also a nice metal lens hood as well), while the aperture ring offers a very tactile alternative for shooting in manual and aperture-priority modes.
Focusing is fast and virtually silent, while sharpness is very good across the whole frame when shooting wide-open. The f/2 maximum aperture might not be quite as impressive as faster lenses, but this is a great little lens for everyday shooting.
This lens is the best street lens for L-mount cameras, but is also available as a very good option for Sony E-mount street photographers as well!
Read our full Sigma 35mm f/2 DG DN Contemporary review
Best Micro Four Thirds lens for street photography
If you are looking for a Micro Four Thirds shooter then you have a lot of options for lenses, with Panasonic, Leica, and Olympus (now OM Systems) leading the charge with first-party options that are cross-compatible with any MTF camera. But the openness of the MTF mount means there are also numerous budget options with almost every focal length you can think of.
But here we are looking for the best MTF lens for street photography, and I think that it is the Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 15mm f/1.7 ASPH. This is a small and compact option perfect for blending in on the streets it offers a full-frame equivalence of 30mm, which is right in the sweet spot for street lenses. The lens is also well-built, which is guaranteed by Leica's seal of approval on this Panasonic lens. But whatever MTF brand camera you shoot with you can get excellent images.
Best cheap lens for street photography
Looking to capture the essence of the streets without breaking the bank? Enter the 27mm AF lens from TTArtisan, a compact powerhouse tailor-made for street photography enthusiasts.
While it may not be flawless, its affordability combined with commendable image quality make it a worthy contender. Despite minor vignetting issues, its robust build, swift and silent autofocus, manual aperture ring, and sleek design earn it street cred. Granted, there are superior options available, but if budget is your bottom line, this lens is a savvy choice for your urban adventures.
Read our full TTArtisan AF 27mm f/2.8 lens review
Best street photography lens for Canon EF
At 77x94mm and tipping the scales at 665g, this Sigma is smaller and lighter than the competing Samyang 35mm f/1.4 AS UMC AE manual-focus lens, although it’s still about twice that weight of Canon's EF and EF 35mm lenses.
Typical of Sigma’s Art prime lenses, it features a fast and whisper-quiet ring-type ultrasonic autofocus system, with the usual availability of manual override. For manual focusing, the reasonably generous rotational travel of the focus ring enables fine and precise adjustments. While the focus distance scale can be a bonus for manual focusing or setting the hyperfocal distance, depth of field markers are only applied for f/16, which makes zone focusing impractical.
The relatively complex and high-tech optical path includes two aspherical elements, one FLD (Fluorite-grade Low Dispersion) element, and four SLD (Special Low Dispersion) elements. Build quality is excellent throughout but the lens isn’t weather-sealed. In-camera corrections for lateral chromatic aberrations, peripheral illumination and distortion are available in most current and recent Canon DSLRs.
Image quality is pretty epic and the Sigma retains fabulous sharpness for an f/1.4 lens when shooting wide-open, right across the image frame. As you’d expect, things get even better when stopping down a little, and the lens is also a star performer in terms of minimizing color fringing and barrel distortion. It’s also very good value for such a high-tech, high-performance f/1.4 autofocus lens.
Read our full Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM | A review
Honorable mentions
Best street photography lens for Nikon F
Compared with Nikon’s new Z series 35mm for its mirrorless cameras, this F-mount lens is smaller, lighter and much less expensive. Both lenses have the same f/1.8 aperture rating.
The ring-type ultrasonic system is typically quick and quiet, as well as enabling full-time manual override. There’s a focus distance scale but it’s of limited benefit for manual focusing, as there are no markings between 0.7m an infinity, and only rudimentary depth of field markers for f/16. Optical highlights include one aspherical element, one ED (Extra-low Dispersion) element and Super Integrated Coating.
Bearing in mind that this lens is less than half the weight of the competing Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM | A, it packs plenty of punch. Sharpness is mostly very good, contrast is excellent even when shooting wide-open, and there’s pretty good resistance to ghosting and flare. However, the seven-blade diaphragm isn’t particularly well-rounded and vignetting is very noticeable when shooting wide-open.
Read our full Nikon AF-S 35mm f/1.8G ED review
Honorable mentions
How we test street photography lenses
We test lenses using both real world sample images and lab tests. Our lab tests are carried out scientifically in controlled conditions using the Imatest testing suite, which consists of custom charts and analysis software that measures resolution in line widths/picture height, a measurement widely used in lens and camera testing. We find the combination of lab and real-word testing works best, as each reveals different qualities and characteristics. See more on how we test and review at Digital Camera World.
