The 5 Best Cameras For Street Photography – Fall 2024

Street photography is an art that requires a good eye, a little discretion, and a camera that you can take cheapest canon camera anywhere. The saying goes that the best camera is the one you have on you, but while your smartphone can capture interesting moments in a pinch, a dedicated camera can take your street photos to the next level. A good street photography camera has to be lightweight and portable, with easy-to-adjust settings, a relatively fast lens, and effective autofocus to capture fleeting moments.

For those reasons, we’ve geared our list toward compact cameras. Depending on your needs and preferences, however, an interchangeable-lens mirrorless camera can also fit the bill, especially when paired with a small prime lens. To that end, we’ve also included some of the best mirrorless options, which you can find listed beneath our point-and-shoot picks.

We’ve bought and tested over 110 cameras in our lab, and below, you’ll find our top-tested cameras for street photography. If you’re interested in urban landscape photography, you might also want to check out our picks for the best cameras for landscape photography. Or, if you want to take street photos while traveling abroad, you can check out our recommendations for the best travel cameras or the best compact cameras.

The RICOH GR III is by far one of the best cameras for street photography on the market. Its minimalist design isn’t the sexiest—you won’t find a viewfinder or tilting screen here—but you can’t beat its tiny, unassuming form factor for discretion and portability. Miraculously, given how compact it is, it also features a relatively large APS-C sensor and built-in stabilization, so it captures excellent overall image quality, with great low-light performance to boot, thanks to its wide-aperture lens.

While the GR III doesn’t have the fastest or most reliable autofocus, it comes with a unique ‘Snap Focus’ feature that’s ideal for street shooting. With the press of a button, the camera ‘snaps’ the focus to a pre-set distance, which is incredibly convenient for quick, discreet shots when you can gauge your distance to a subject. The wide-angle 28mm full-frame equivalent focal length is also well-suited to street scenes, giving you a lot of coverage and room to crop in if needed. If you prefer a slightly narrower field of view, you can opt for the RICOH GR IIIx instead; it’s a tad pricier but comes with a 40mm equivalent lens that gives a more natural field of view.

The Fujifilm X100VI isn’t nearly as small or discreet as the RICOH GR III, but it offers a lot more functionality and premium features that you won’t find on any other point-and-shoot. Like the RICOH, it uses a larger APS-C sensor but offers a much higher 40.2-megapixel resolution, giving you some more leeway to crop in your images. It also features a unique hybrid viewfinder that can toggle between an electronic viewfinder and an optical rangefinder with frame lines to give you a wider view of your subject’s surroundings. The tilting screen is also great for waist-level shooting. All of that, plus a fantastic built-in lens with a 35mm equivalent focal length, make it one of the best cameras for street photography.

That being said, this is an expensive camera—it’s pricier than many interchangeable lens models. Popular demand has also made it hard to find in stock. If you don’t think the X100VI is worth the hype, you might be all set with another camera from our list. Alternatively, if you like the size of the X100VI and want the Fuji shooting experience, picking up the older Fujifilm X-E4 and pairing it with a small prime lens comes pretty close, though it uses a lower-resolution sensor and lacks the X100VI’s optical rangefinder.

If you’d prefer a compact camera with a bit of zoom range, the Sony RX100 VII is the best camera for street photography with a built-in zoom lens. It’s similar in size to the RICOH GR III, though it uses a smaller 1-inch type sensor, making it less suited to low-light shooting. Despite that, it’s still a great sensor for its size, with a stacked design that allows for incredibly quick 20 fps burst shooting. Beyond that, its built-in lens has a versatile 24-200mm equivalent focal length range, giving you more flexibility to shoot subjects that are farther away.

Despite its compact design, the camera also comes with useful extras like a pop-up viewfinder, which is nice to have on sunny days, and a tilting screen that’s great for waist-level shots. Physical controls are somewhat limited, so if you’d prefer a more old-school feel with manual exposure dials, the Panasonic LUMIX LX100 II is a great alternative if you can find it. However, it’s been discontinued and has a shorter zoom range than the Sony.