Street photography with a wide, or ultra-wide lens can be tricky, but it does not need to be difficult. Just follow these 6 steps:

This blog is a much-requested follow-up to one of last year's most popular blogs: HOW TO Shoot Candid STREET PHOTOGRAPHY Without Looking Like a CREEP.

If you haven't read it yet, feel free to check it out.

Both photos in this blog were captured at 16mm, using a 16-35mm lens on a full frame camera.

You certainly don't need to go that wide. But if you want to try a new take on your street photography, here are 6 tips to help you get the shot.

1 - The wider the lens, the wider the depth of field

For anyone who has ever shot with a long telephoto lens - or even a lens with a fast aperture - you'll know just how easy it is to separate the foreground from the background and achieve some beautiful bokeh.

A wide angle lens, on the other hand, is quite different in that regard. It seems that no matter how much you open up the aperture, the best bokeh you can hope to achieve is a mediocre-looking blur at best.

This feature can however be very beneficial when you just need everything to be in focus, and this is where wide angle lenses can really shine.

If you're shooting with a wide focal length (16-24mm) during the day, set the aperture at f/8. You can go smaller or larger, but f/8 is a great compromise between achieving correct exposure, and working within the sharpness 'sweet spot' of the lens itself. It also ensures that your ISO doesn't go too high (more on that later).

An f/8 aperture should also be bright enough until the sun is close to the horizon, or as long as the sky isn't too overcast. In the case of the latter, try f/5.6 instead.

2 - Set your shutter speed to at least 1/500 of a second

If you want to capture sharp, crisp photos which make everything completely frozen in time, then set your shutter speed to at least 1/500, with 1/2000 being the absolute sweet spot - although that's a difficult speed to work with unless you're shooting completely wide open and under direct sunlight.

Remember that anything slower than 1/500 will more than likely capture the motion blur of swinging arms. It will also start to blur anything moving faster than someone running or riding a bike.

3 - Use Auto ISO

There are good reasons why you should set your ISO manually or lock it off. However, when it comes to street photography, the last thing you want to be thinking about is correct exposure.

Once your aperture is locked in, you know that your sensor will get enough light for 95% of the photos you shoot.

The same goes for your shutter speed. If it's set to at least 1/500, then there is little chance that motion blur would be a problem in most of your photos unless your subject is moving very fast.

That just leaves the third side of the exposure triangle - the ISO.

There will be moments when light may dip for a while - either due to cloud cover or the photographer walking into the shade. This is where ISO will pick up the slack.

Ideally you want to work somewhere around ISO 200-400. Having your ISO set to Auto allows the camera to fluctuate between those values, and if need be, to go up to 800, or even 1,600 in a pinch. That's fine, and you've allowed for that with your shutter speed and aperture settings above.

Meanwhile, don't be put off by the talk of high ISO noise. It exists, it has always existed, and it has never been a problem for anyone, especially when it comes to street photography. It's all marketing fluff to get you to buy a new camera every year.

Modern cameras do a phenomenal job at controlling noise, as does Lightroom, Photoshop, or whatever software you may be using.

As a bit of a side note, if you were to look closely at the quality of the detail that is captured by the latest phone cameras, you would be shocked by just how blocky and messy those details are; and how much uglier they are, when compared to photos shot with a dedicated camera at ISO 12,800 or higher.

So don't fear high ISO. It's a great feature which was impossible during the days of film photography, and it's a powerful tool helping you fine-tune your exposure on the fly.

4 - Don't use Autofocus

Using autofocus while having your camera settings dialled in to the above is completely unnecessary, as is using image stabilisation - which you should also turn off, as it's about as practical as wipers on a clear day.

Autofocus will only slow you down, confuse the camera, and cause you to potentially miss some great shots while the camera hunts for what it thinks is your intended subject.

Instead, try this:

Only use autofocus once, at the very start of your shoot, in order to pre-focus your lens on the ground, at a distance of about 3 steps in front of you.

Then, turn autofocus to MF and leave it there for the rest of the day.

This '3-step' focus bubble will ensure that anything from about two steps in front of you, all the way to infinity, will be within the acceptable range of sharpness and focus.

5 - Hold your camera at waist level, using your index finger and pinky as the 'sight'

Street photography is all about capturing genuine and un-staged moments.

One of the best ways to capture completely natural and candid street photography is to not let your subjects know that you are photographing them. This goes double for shooting with a wide angle lens, as your subjects will be much closer to you than if you were shooting at 35mm or longer.

This means that you should not be seen raising your camera to your eye, or anywhere else for that matter. It should just hang comfortably by your side as if it were switched off, and the less attention you draw to it, the better.

So how do you know whether your subject is framed correctly, or at all?

You use the 'Sign of the Horns' as your viewfinder - or 'sight', and use proprioception to 'see' with your fingers.

One of the requirements for this to work is for your camera to hang vertically by your side.

So the first thing you should do is feel the weight of the camera and the lens.

You must learn the camera's horizontal balance, so that the lens is flat, and pointing straight ahead, not at the sky or the ground.

Next, line up your subject between your index finger (which is your shutter finger) and your pinky. You are creating a sort of two-finger boundary with which you frame your subject.

At this stage you can also stick out your thumb as a way of sensing whether your horizon is straight. This is a slightly more advanced move, but it's a good idea to practice it anyway.

This 'sight' method will ensure that your photo is framed correctly.

It definitely takes a bit of practice, but it's a valuable skill to have when shooting incognito, and it will come in very handy when shooting street photography with other focal lengths.

6 - The most important step of all - Keep moving!

Don't stand in one spot, as that will make people try to walk around you.

Instead, try to look like one of the crowd. Nobody will pay attention to you if you look like you belong there. That is what you want when capturing candid photography without disturbing the scene, so to speak.

In conclusion

So there you have it, a long-overdue follow-up to HOW TO Shoot Candid STREET PHOTOGRAPHY Without Looking Like a CREEP.

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Happy shooting!