Slowing down and reducing equipment size for street photography

[stephanar]

Hello guys, new member here! Registered to ask for some advice.
I worked as a photographer for 2 years, but as the income was real low and now I graduated, I will change my work area. But photography has always been a passion and now that I don't have to worry about making money with it I'm back at focusing on my own work. Although the worker side of me needed some equipment, the artist never needed it that much and I got really used to do that with film cameras and normal lenses. But chemicals and films got really expensive around here, so, for about a year or so, all I've done is digital.
After selling almost everything, I kept to myself a canon 60D, a 18-135 and a 430 exII.
But now I'm in a dilemma. Everytime I get the 60D to go shooting I feel like I'm going to work. Besides that, It stays at home most of the time because it is big and awkward. So last week I announced it on the classifieds. My wife has a sony nex that she never uses, so she said if I wanted I could have it. For me it was ok, I could sell my part, get some nice manual glass for the nex and be happy.
But the nex is that thing... everytime you want to change a setting you have to dive on 10 menus and maybe you won't find what you want. Besides that, I don't know how much the focus peaking can be reliable at low light, the camera feels too small in my big hands, and good rangefinder lenses are pretty expensive and hard to find around here.
So I thought about about other way of doing it. Maybe I could buy a smaller and lighter bag (like the retrospective 5, or a suburban disguise 10), sell my kit lens and my flash, put some more money and get the 28mm 1.8 as a walkaround lens and the 50mm 1.4 (or 1.8) for portraits. I wouldn't bother carrying the nex with me for wide angle shots in case I need it. As I said, I used to take with me just a camera and a normal lens and at that time I took the most beautiful pictures (for my eyes). Maybe getting back to this simplicity can be a good thing.
So, what do you think? I know only myself can know what I want, but maybe someone around here has gone through a similar experience and can share what they did to help me find a good way.
Thanks for any input!

 

[71M]

I'd retain the 60D myself - I'd miss not owning a DSLR, and a good speedlight for it too, even if they gathered dust for a while. The low light manual focussing problem: you could pre-focus/zone focus the camera for use in those situations on the street with some success. Konica Hexanon AR lenses could be one fairly good substitute for your preferred RF lenses; there are NEX adapters for these, or Asahi Super Takumars also are pretty fine. I agree, the menu-diving with the NEX for me, was a faff and I didn't keep the camera for very long. Maybe consider a decent compact like the Panasonic LX3, with AF 24-60mm Summicron, Raw capture and 1/1.63" sensor. It'd be more discrete than a NEX, but with the smaller chip.

You could opt to use a DLSR with smaller primes - I'd retain the flash though - but it will often be a different streetphotography experience than using a more discrete camera.