Anton, I'm interested in doing some street photography (most of my current shots lean towards abstract), but I've never found the courage to. Since you're using a large and bulky DSLR, do you shoot openly, or discreetly?
Would you mind sharing some tips on that?
I do a few ways depending on the lens I have on hand.
Most of the time I very seldom lift up the camera to my eye but I shoot at stomach level, waist level or knee level. Nobody knows I am shooting.
Everything is done by feel. After a while you develop the sense for it and your framings starts getting accurate.
I compose and frame the shot best when I have 30mm or 35mm on DX (about 50mm equivalent on FX). Nowadays I don't do 30 to 35 anymore coz I wanna practise with other focal lenght. I manage ok with 24mm (35mm equivalent on FX) and 50mm (75mm equivalent on FX) but the success rate is lower.
I either let the cam autofocus, or I manual focus by judging distance and DOF.
Focusing is sometimes out, or a bit OOF, but thats the characteristic of street shooting and some OOF is totally acceptable for this genre.
With long lens I shoot as normal and snipe from distance (like using my 105mm or 70-200). Seldom do this method though because it makes me look sneaky. I prefer to do it boldly, yet nobody knows I am shooting.
Sometimes I still shoot waist level with the 105mm (152mm on FX), like this, focusing is out, but acceptable to me.