Continuing the series of night-time street photographs in Barcelona.

This time I have tried using a 28mm lens, which has proven very difficult. You might expect that the wider angle would mean needing a lower shutter speed, but in practise if you try to get closer to the subject to compensate for the wider field-of-view there is no real advantage. Add to this the practical limitation that my 28mm is a stop slower than my usual lenses, and it is very hard to catch images successfully.

With the typical light in Barcelona, most of these exposures were at 1/15th second. Subjects are inevitably far away or panning has to be used to track the subjects movement – no one stays still in Barcelona (well, almost).

Shrine to a victim of an attack in Joaquin Costa, Barcelona. This year has seen one person murdered on the streets every six days in the city, with the deaths usually connected to violent muggings. Ada Colau, Barcelona’s mayor, does not think that this is a problem, apparently.

All images shot with the M7 and a mix of 28mm f2 and 35mm 1.4 lenses. On balance, the 35mm seems to offer the optimal balance between shutter speed and depth of field when shooting at EI1600 in Barcelona. I am have also switched from ID-11 to XTOL for the push processing – partly because it is less toxic and partly because it seems to yield slightly better shadow detail when push processing.