So, I somehow found myself with the Sony a7R III in my hands—a camera that's honestly overkill for most people, including myself. It’s a beast of a camera, no doubt. And today, I’m sharing what makes this camera both exciting and, quite frankly, challenging for my style of street photography.

Today, these compact cameras are more than just a nod to vintage aesthetics. Sure, they fit right in with the retro “Indy Sleaze” vibe, but for me, as a photographer and filmmaker, they represent so much more. These cameras offer a tactile, engaging experience that smartphones just can’t replicate. They bring back the joy of simply taking a picture—without the pressure of perfection or the distraction of notifications.

Sony’s RX1 came with a lot of features that were both ahead of their time and surprisingly quaint by today’s standards. For example, it didn’t have a touchscreen. In fact, Sony hadn’t yet hopped on the touchscreen trend, so navigating through menus was a bit of a dance with the D-pad. Still, this hasn’t stopped me from capturing fast-moving scenes with it. And later, I’ll share a trick that makes focusing a lot more manageable than you might think.

I have owned the Sony A6700 for a while now, I pre-ordered the camera and received it long before Adobe Lightroom could edit the RAW image files. In that time I have used the camera extensively for photography and videography, it is certainly a very capable camera in the APSC hybrid camera category, but it has a few issues which can cause headaches in both photo and video use cases.

Perhaps the second most common question is “What if someone sees me take their photo?” this is the meat of what we’re going to discuss in this blog post. We will cover how to handle an interaction like this and also, more importantly, how to prepare so these interactions have a positive outcome.

There was something in some of the dogs I shot that day, like I was finding the parts of people that I hoped to photograph. That in-the-moment presence that only a dog can have, no worries, no fears and no bills to pay. For me, this practice helped me feel more comfortable within the same space as the dogs and also, more importantly, their owners.