Why 28mm is the best focal length for Street Photography

28mmStreet
Jul 14, 2025
4 min read

Updated: Jan 22

July - Blog 17

It's quite well known that I have been obsessed about the 28mm ever since I discovered it for street photography back in 2023.

It's been a wild ride of ups and downs with my street photography journey and the only constant that has weathered the storm has been the 28mm focal length. A focal length that has remained in my street kit ever since.

Not my favorite focal length..

Let's rewind back to my humble beginnings as a street photographer back in 2016. I was just starting out on my journey. Believe it or not but my most used focal length back then was the "ever-so-boring" standard wide angle the 35mm focal length.

I used and learned street photography with the 35mm and I'm grateful for the learning, it served me well all those years ago.

But as I grew more experienced I also started to experiment with other classic focal lengths. From 2020 onwards I added and came to love the 50mm (technically it was a 55mm) and the 85mm focal lengths.

I loved the longer focal lengths because it put the needed distance between me and my subjects. I could stand comfortably on a street corner or on the opposite side of the street and still be able to capture great photographs - discreetly.

The operative word being DISCREETLY.

For the type of street photography I was doing back then it was just perfect. I loved (still do!) capturing those high contrast and silhouette photographs.

I could do them for days.

There is just something aesthetic and almost poetic about those type of photographs. In nature they are very simple and technically not very hard to capture or master - with a bit of practice and help from the surrounding shadows.

Looking back - the wider focal lengths did not even register on my street photography radar. I simply didn't have any desire to own a wide angle lens.

Well sort of... when I was learning photography I was very much into architecture photography especially building architecture. Capturing those odd angles, geometry and all that goodness.

To capture that goodness I bought the 24mm focal length to my kit. But I don’t use it for street photography. It’s too wide for my taste.

Copenhagen is blessed with great architecture whether its interior or external as buildings. Also Copenhagen is not that big and within a year I'd already visited the most iconic buildings - like the rest of the local Instragrammes.

I wanted something different

My switch from longer to wider focal lengths came like a thief in the night.

Around end of 2022 and start of 2023 I was really tired of street photography and the "same old same old". By this point I'd been doing street photography for well over 6 years. Which is a long time to be doing the same type of photography albeit I also did a lot of night street photography to spice it up now and again.

To regain some of my lost motivation to do street photography I gave myself a street photography challenge:

"Get closer to my subjects".

This of course also meant I was in the market for a more pocket sized camera. Honestly I forgot which came first the new pocket sized camera or the challenge.

I was looking at the Ricoh GR series but the Fuji x100v won me over and thus started a new chapter of my street photography journey.

While owning the Fuji x100v meant I had to go back and revisit the 35mm equivalent focal length. A focal length I left behind and had no desire to return to.

I was forced to use it once again as the Fuji x100v is a fixed focal length camera. But the Fuji brass had been very cleaver and developed these conversion lenses - available in 28mm and 50mm versions.

I opted in for the 28mm just to try something new..and a new obsession was born.

Time for a change

It's been 2.5 years since I tried shooting with a 28mm focal length and have never looked back.

Even though I still own all the other focal lengths - I hardly pick them up for street photography these days.

I use the 35mm and 50mm often when creating content for my Youtube channel but that's about it.

In the 2.5 years since I have also changed and evolved my shooting style quite significantly. I left night Street photography and those pin sharp high contrast photographs behind for day street photography. I go for those raw, gritty and very close photographs. There is something emotional about them.

I recently also left digital street photography (for now) as I sold my beloved Fuji x100v weeks ago.

As of writing this blog I have undertaken the largest challenge to date as a street photographer.

I have committed to film street photography only using my Leica M6 re-issue and a 28mm Voigtlander lens.

Why I love the 28mm for street photography

I love the 28mm for street photography as it requires and demand so much from me as a street photographer. I have to work for it. For every single shot I make.

It’s wide but not too wide.

Anybody who’s shot with a 28mm focal length knows that it's not an easy focal length to use or work with.

Because its a wide angle focal length it requires as a minimum from you as the photograher to be close to your subjects.

To get in there.

With a 28mm it’s easy to crop in as needed but it’s fine line to balance that to perfection.

If you're not close enough then the entire composition can feel flat or even crowed depending on the scene you're trying to capture.

If your too close and don’t compose correctly and shoot from an odd angle your photographs might end up being distorted.

I’ll talk in more detail about the 28mm focal length in this Youtube video

What started as a challenge for me ended up re-defining the way I do street photography entirely.

This is of course a personal preference if you like to be up-close and personal with the subjects you're trying to capture. But for me it feel real and raw.