Panning is Easy

Panning is tracking moving subjects while you shoot them at fairly low shutter speeds. The tracking keeps the subject sharp, and the camera movement blurs the background. Like so:

I kept the motorcycle and its riders at the same spot in the frame, so it is mostly sharp. But because I moved the camera to achieve that, the background is blurred (streaked, to be exact).

When I show a panning shot to another photographer, I often get comments about how difficult it is. That's nice to hear, but here's a little secret: it isn't.

Panning is easy?

Really. Think of it this way: you're extremely good at tracking without a camera. You do it every time you look at a moving object. Now just do it with a camera in front of your face. You will not need very much practice; it's really the same thing. (It's a little harder with an LCD screen at arms length; I find that a camera with a viewfinder makes this a lot easier.)

Once you're tracking your subject, the only remaining thing is to press the shutter at the right moment. You know, composition and the like. This can be hard with a mobile phone or a cheap point and shoot camera, as they have an annoying delay between pressing the button and taking the picture. With a responsive camera, this too is no big problem.

So why don't mine come out?

Because you're not shooting enough. The problem is that to get a bit of blur in the background, your shutter speed needs to be quite slow. Typically, too slow to get reliably sharp subjects. You will get some unwanted motion blur, be it due to a little wobble, your heartbeat, or not perfectly tracking the subject. To illustrate this, the image above is shot at 1/30th of a second. For a static subject and the same lens the rule of thumb is to use 1/50th or faster. So the shutter speed is too slow for a static shot, and for panning, you're doing something even more difficult: move the camera smoothly and at the right speed to track the subject.

That's why a lot of panning images don't come out. Simply too much blur, because the shutter speed is so low. The solution is simple: shoot a lot of images. Most will be garbage, but mostly likely there'll be few acceptable ones too.

So that's it, this is the key skill of panning: shoot A LOT. Much more than usual. And there will be some gems. Just don't show all the garbage to anyone and you'll be admired for your amazing skills:-)

Over time, your skill will improve, and so will your hit rate. Or better, raise your standards with your skill level, so you keep a similar hit rate but with higher quality keepers.

OK, so how do I do this?

Gear and settings:

• Preferably, use a responsive camera (no long shutter lag) with a viewfinder. Not required, but it saves on practice and improves your hit rate.
• Set the camera to a mode where you determine the shutter speed (typically, T or Tv); of course, full manual will work if you prefer that. If your camera does not offer that level of control, you're mostly out of luck. All automatic modes will try to avoid slow shutter speeds, so you'll have to shoot in circumstances dark enough to force a suitable shutter speed.
• Set the camera to continuous auto-focus, if possible. Don't worry too much about that - nobody will notice if the focus is a little off. Motion blur and the likely small aperture will hide that.
• I usually stick to single shot mode and try to time it well. Burst modes (where the camera rapidly fires off several shots) generally don't work out for me. They make tracking much harder because the viewfinder or screen blacks out or freezes each time it takes a shot. And unless you have a very fast burst mode, timing your shots to hit the subject in the sweet spot can be hard too. One case where I find this a price worth paying is for running animals or people. Their posture changes a lot between shots in a burst, and I found it very hard to catch the right moment by hand. Your mileage may vary, so give burst mode a try and see if and when it works for you.

Start out simple.

• Pick a simple subject - you want predictable and straight movement, and not too many distractions around. Something like cars or bikes on a straight road.
• Pick a fixed focal length. Zooming in and out will make it a little harder to get the framing right - remember that the subject will probably be coming closer or moving away! It will also affect the optimal shutter speed. So keep it simple at first, and don't zoom. Start with a middle of the road focal length (say 25-50mm on a crop DSLR, 40-80 on a full frame DSLR).
• Pick one shutter speed. Say 1/30th of a second. Try it out, and adjust as needed. If everything is one messy blur, pick a faster speed (say, 1/50th). If the background isn't very blurry, pick a slower speed (say, 1/20th).
• Pick the spot where you want to capture the subject. Get in a stable position as usual, and then twist your upper body towards your approaching subject.
• Pick and focus on your subject before it gets there, and track it a little past there. And obviously, press the shutter button when it passes the right spot.

As you get better at this (easy doesn't mean no practice) you can start complicating things. Using different focal lengths. Try wide angle or tele. Try subjects coming around a corner. Try it at night, with or without flash, as in the images below. Squat down for a low perspective as in the top shot here (squatting makes the tracking harder). Try smooth backgrounds; try busy and colourful ones. Try athletes or animals, where the posture (and thus the precise timing) is crucial. There is no end.

And remember, nobody needs to know you threw out 100 shots to get that one nice one.

This is a 0.3 second exposure, hence the massive blur. I've used flash here to get a sharp image of the motorcycle. If you look closely though, you can see the blur of the motorcycle created throughout the entire 0.3s exposure.

A night shot. It doesn't need to be perfectly sharp to work! This is 1/4th of a second, and I'm using my tripod as an improvised monopod (legs folded in).

Butter Tea

Getting ready to distribute butter tea; at a festival in Jambay Lakhang, Jakar, Bhutan.

Bhutan is very welcoming to the visitor. At this busy local religious festival (with just a minor sprinkling of tourists) I was offered some butter tea and chili rice, just like all pilgrims and locals that were there for religious reasons.

I must admit that the butter tea can be an acquired taste. This one was - very pungent, creamy, and salty. The chili rice is just that: white rice spiced up with some chili, served in your bare hand.

Making Tarmac

Manual Roadwork, near Mongar, Bhutan.

These guys are making tarmac by mixing hot molten asphalt with grit. All day long. Roadwork is quite hard, slow, manual work in those quarters. But quite photogenic too...

To get this, I moved around them go get the smoke to be backlit by the sun. Then it was a matter of waiting until the smoke, their bodies and the shovels created a nice composition - I wanted those diagonals.

Monk in Punakha Dzong

This is in a 1000 Buddhas temple in the monastery that is part of Punakha Dzong, Punakha, Bhutan. The photo-gods were with me that afternoon.

I was walking down a corridor soaking up the atmosphere and gorgeous architecture of the Dzong (a fortress, combining a monastery and government quarters) when I heard 'come' out of a room I passed. This monk was waiting for me there. I put my camera down and had him explain me how to pay my respects to the Buddha. He explained a bit about the room and the 1000 buddhas. I was just beginning to wonder how to bring up the subject of a picture - always a bit difficult when it comes to religion - when he pointed to my camera, still sitting on the floor, and simply said - 'camera'. I snapped this portrait.

One that should not have been, as ISO 800 was not good enough: 1/5th of a second is a tad slow at 127mm... But as said, the photo gods were with me. Good karma. It's not critically sharp but I doubt you'll notice on the web. Love this shot anyway.

(I took two more almost identical shots, seconds later, at more reasonable shutter speeds, but you can see his smile slowly drop. Expression over perfection, for me.)

When I was about to say my goodbye to him, he referred to me as father. A touching end to a brief meeting I will remember for a long time.

If you have more than 12 great pictures, your standards aren't high enough

If you set out to select your best images for a trip, a subject, a year, or your whole career, how many do you end up with? If it's more than a dozen or so, your standards aren't high enough. Raise your standards, be more selective, and reduce the number. Your work justifies a higher standard. And the result is a stronger collection.
Obviously, this idea is based on the famous Ansel Adams quote:

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

In fact, the idea came to me when discussing making a selection of twelve for a ten-day photo tour. What if you have more? Well, Ansel Adams thought he made twelve in a good year. So if you think you made more (let alone more in ten days) you should raise your standards.

Which is easier said than done, of course. I find it very hard to get down to a suitable small number. Especially when things are still fresh.

The image above is one of my dozen for 2012.

All lined up

Rangjung Woesel Choeling Monastery, East Bhutan.

I had taken a shot of this group before, reflected in this same flooded courtyard. I'd even shown them the shot (to little reaction). But when I saw them coming along the wall, next to the water, I dashed like a madman to get the water between them and me. I guess you can see why. One of my favourite shots from the trip.
(About 50ft behind me, Mark Stennett was doing the same, but the extra distance gave him a cleaner shot: head-on, and all six of them evenly spaced. Ah well:-)

Victoria Harbour

A small example of the rapidly disappearing old in Hong Kong, next to the new. In this case, the old is a tourist attraction (the Aqua Luna). There are still many traditional pieces of Hong Kong left, but whenever I see them I cannot shake the impression it is dying out.

Shopping Nirvana

A slightly strange photo. Probably mostly interesting photographers, especially if you are intrigued by reflections (and polariser filters). Others may want to keep moving, nothing to see here.

I shot this from the roof terrace of ifc mall, down through a light well to a corridor down below. The floaty things are decorations suspended from the ceiling, above the shoppers.

All of that is overlaid with a reflection of ifc2 (some 400m or 1300ft tall) looming above me, and the sky. The dark crescent at the bottom is actually the shadow of my own head. In that shadow, there is no reflection to speak of, so you see the shoppers quite clearly there.

I shot this in colour, but converted to black and white digitally. That conversion was very interesting. In most digital processing software, you can determine how to 'mix' the different colours to shades of grey. For example, make the blues darker shades of grey, and the reds brighter.

The reflection was mostly blue sky. Now if you push the mix to render blues very light, the entire top half becomes white. The reflection becomes so bright it overpowers the view down, leaving only a (boring) reflection of ifc2 on a white sky.

If on the other hand you push the blues to be very dark, the reflection almost disappears, and you have a clear view straight down.

I played with that a bit and decided to mix the reflection with the view down, for a slightly disorienting, dreamy look.

The curious thing was that I could regulate the amount of reflection with one slider, digitally, at home on my computer. Normally that takes a polariser filter, when you take the shot, with no options to do anything like that digital post processing.

I'd always heard and believed that you cannot do polarisation in post processing. As it turns out, sometimes you can, at least if you convert to B&W.

As I said, interesting mostly for photographers:-)

Bright Lights Big City

I've been very negligent... No post for months, and there was enough to post.

For one, I am now located (at least on weekdays) in Hong Kong. Which is a photogenic city. See above. Expect more in the coming weeks. (Or maybe not, given recent history on this blog:-)

This is a long exposure from the top of a parking garage in Kowloon, across Victoria Harbour towards Hong Kong Island. The tall tower is ifc2 (International Financial Centre 2).

How much is that lens?

The Vietnamese can be startlingly direct...

Being direct

This guy sat down next to me last Saturday while I was having a sugarcane juice on the street. He started talking to me, and skipped the usual questions (for VN) about my name, country of origin, age, and salary, and proceeded straight to the cost of my camera and lens.

He was quite OK with me taking his portrait, and was happy with the result, though he wondered why I did not use flash. In the shot above he was pointing at the button operating my pop-up flash.

Very direct

I can tell you that my wife is not typically that thrilled when a business contact remarks "you look old today".   Personally, I am not going to try that one. 

It works two ways

It's not just the questions they ask though. The same can apply to their answers. Take, for example, the following job interview question (which I heard from the interviewer).
Q: what would your friends say is a bad quality of yours?
A: I can be quite hot tempered. I really lose it sometimes.

Refreshingly direct, but maybe less advisable than the usual "I am a perfectionist".

Hà Giang Landscape

OK, time for some variety. Hà Giang not only has wonderful people, it also boasts a very impressive karst landscape. It's a rugged mountain landscape, characterised by conical mountain tops. The highland close to Dồng Văn is a good example, have a look at the Google Maps satellite image below.

Despite all that natural beauty, I did not take many landscape pictures, because it was permanently hazy throughout our trip. Leading to very boring even grey images. There were a few exceptions, where the haze actually lent a beautiful atmosphere itself. The shot above is an example.

It was taken at the green arrow in the satellite image below. It's taken in South East direction, so you'll need to move the map to see the mountains it depicts.

View Larger Map

On the map you can see the strange karst landscape in the highlands. Think Ha Long Bay without the water. Or, as far as I can judge from pictures, from the more famous karst in Yunnan, China. (The border to Yunnan is about 2mi away from this point.)

Picture Sharing 2

The camera is such a great prop. Especially someone else's.

We had lunch at this place in Dồng Văn in Hà Giang province in the far north of Vietnam. One of the cooks was very photogenic. With 4 photographers, someone is bound to ask and get a shot. And show it to her, on the back of the camera.

Which is the moment I captured. She's shy but flattered, looking at her fresh portrait.

Technical: The lighting is simple - all natural, from the open shop front on the left. Classic window lighting I guess, but in a fairly dark room.

Picture Sharing

I've been posting a lot of what could have been posted on this blog to Google+. I will catch up and repost and expand some of those posts here.

One of my favourite images from the Hà Giang trip.

It captures one of the best things about it - the joy of digital photography not just to the photographer but also to the subjects. Whenever we turned around the camera to show our (their) shots, the smiles just beamed. It turned the one-way click of the shutter to real contact. And that usually rubbed off on the rest of the shots.

I tried to capture this many many times, but only this one worked. I simply tried until luck struck, and all faces lined up just right.

I hope to go back one day, and give some of my subjects a print. (No, that is not entirely altruistic:-)

Like the next post, this also shows what a great prop a camera can be - especially the back of someone else's camera. More to come!

Hà Giang Portrait

I spent a week on a phototour in Hà Giang province, in the far north of Vietnam. This area is very remote, very poor, has impressive scenery, and is not at all touristy. The most amazing aspect for me were the people though. So I'll start my Hà Giang series with a portrait.

This man waved us in when we walked past his shop and invited us to a cup of green tea. (This turned out to be quite common - we had lots of green tea. And rice wine.) I asked him in my best Vietnamese whether he grew the tea himself. He said so, and then showed us the tea in a big store bought container. I'm still unsure whether he misunderstood me due to my bad (and Southern) pronunciation or simply recycled the container for his own tea.

After we drank the tea, I asked him whether I could take his picture. He smiled and looked into the camera.

Often, the first shot is a stiff unsmiling pose, requiring more attempts before I get a smile or relaxed pose (of which more later). Not so in this case. One shot, and I knew I did not need more.

Edited to add technical info: natural light, short telephoto. He is sitting in the shade, just inside his shop, facing the very sunny street. The shop entrance acts as a huge soft box.

Hospitality

OK, I'm seriously behind on this blog... This is from last June, close to Sa Pa in North Vietnam.

Sa Pa (or Sapa) is fairly touristy, known for the rice terraces and colourfully dressed ethnic minorities. But the vast majority of tourists stay a few days only, and never venture far from the town. I stayed longer and one of the things I did was a 'homestay' with a Red Dao family about 30km (20mi) south of Sapa. They are guided hikes (guide mandatory), in this case to a remote village, where you stay at a local family's home. The guide had a hard time finding the place, evidently never having been there before. He also kept moaning about the lack of night life.

The house was a farm of a Red Dao family. Think one big room, mud floor, wooden partitions. Chickens roaming around. One entire extended family (3 generations, including an infant and two toddlers).

Initially, I felt very uncomfortable, thinking I was taking their best bed (I didn't). Matters did not improve when my guide used their kitchen to make a meal just for us, using our own ingredients.

But after our dinner, the landlord killed a chicken - evidently a party was in order. And I was invited. I could not decline (though my guide stupidly decided to seek out the non-existent local night-life). And I am happy I didn't - I was really made to feel welcome, and had a really great time.

I ate little of the meal (one dinner is generally enough for me). But I could not decline the rượu (rice brandy). Which was served at incredible speed. Fill all glasses. Double handed handshake, say 'chúc sức khỏe' (wishing good health), clink, and bottoms up. Refill and repeat. When I started to try and slow down, they insisted - it'd make me sleep well. I explained in my best Vietnamese that with a little, I'd sleep well, but too much and I wouldn't sleep at all. Which luckily did the trick. I could take the tempo down to a sip per round, rather than bottoms up.

All of this ended at 8, when the entire family watched a Vietnamese soap opera on TV (the fruits of running a home stay?). At 9, everyone was in bed. Except the landlord who decided to repair his motorcycle. Lots of clinking sounds, but I have my doubts as to the results.

The alarm clock (rooster) went off a 4:30, and by 5:15 everyone was in the fields, working. Except for the landlord, who looked a bit worse for wear.

The Perfect Camera

The perfect camera does not exist. There is no camera with the control and quality of a medium format technical camera, the versatility, handling, low light performance and responsiveness of a DSLR, and with the ease of use, size and cost of a point and shoot. So the name of the game is compromise. You will have to sacrifice some less important features to get the ones that are important to you.

My Compromise

I already have a nice DSLR and I love it. But have found it has one big drawback. It is too big and heavy, and too conspicuous to have on me all the time. So I miss shots because it is at home. To fill that gap, I wanted a small truly pocket-able camera, with good quality, decent low light performance, and most of the control that my DSLR gives me. For me, the Canon S95 perfectly fills that gap. (The new S100 which is soon to come would probably be even better.)

Pros:

• small and light (easily slips in a trouser or shirt pocket)
• excellent picture quality in most circumstances
• decent low light performer, helped by image stabilisation and an f/2.0 lens (though only at wide angle)
• shoots RAW, and has all the controls I need (PASM modes, plus the usual scene modes)
• clever controls, such as the dial around the lens, partly make up for a shortage of dedicated buttons
• good 720p HD video

Cons:

• small (so hard to hold well)
• short battery life
• no focusing and only digital zoom during video
• no viewfinder (which would help better framing)
• not as fast or responsive as a DSLR
• not as good in low light as a DSLR

Competitors like the Canon G12 (which has the same sensor), Nikon P7000, Olympus XZ-1 and Panasonic LX5 reduce these drawbacks. But they're bigger, would not fit in a jeans pocket, and would be at home much more often.

The same holds even stronger for the compact system cameras (such as the Olympus PEN, Panasonic G, Nikon 1, and Sony NEX families): they get quite close to a DSLR in quality and versatility, but in a small package. But they're not cheap, and not small enough to have always with me (jeans pockets!).

Which is why the S95 is the best compromise for me as a second camera. Together with a DSLR it does almost all I want, and the overlap (where both work fine) is remarkably big! (The shot above was taken with it.)

Your Compromise

Your best camera will depend on what you want to do with it, on your budget, and on what you already have. Assuming you are serious about photography, here are some suggestions.

If you want one small camera to do it all, but jeans pocket size is not a requirement, and you can afford it, then the Olympus, Panasonic or Sony compact system cameras may be the ticket. I suspect (but may be proven wrong) that the Nikon 1 won't have the image quality for these users.

If you are less concerned about size, go for a DSLR. If it's your first, pick the brand your friends have.

If you are thinking of a Fuji X100, a Leica M, or some other "niche" camera, you should know why they are the best for you and should not need advice like this:-)

For second cameras, think of the S95 and the competitors I mentioned above, but also your iPhone, or a standard point and shoot. Any new smart phone or recent point and shoot will take great pictures in most circumstances. Consider saving the money for lenses for your first camera.

Street Portraits

For street scenes I am quite happy to take candid shots. But for "close" people shots like this one I generally don't like sneaking the shot when they are unaware. Nor do I like just shoving the camera in someone's face and taking their picture. Which leaves me one option: ask for permission.

Asking a stranger may sound like a daunting prospect. Until recently, I was a bit apprehensive too. But a trip to a market here got me over that.

First of all - just do it, it truly isn't that hard. Hardly anybody minds being asked, and you will be surprised at how many people are fine with being photographed.

It is easier if you go with a few other photographers. And it is a lot easier in a place like District 4 in Ho Chi Minh City. Formerly notorious as the 'mafia' area in the city, it is still poor. But the people are amazing. Hospitable, friendly, and many are even eager to be photographed. Nice combo with a rich crop in characters and photogenic faces.

Vietnam is a good place in general for people photography for these same reasons, especially outside touristy areas. People like being photographed, and they make for good subjects. And they easily engage with you, making for quite natural portraits. I've had very little trouble with badly posed and stiff pictures here. The only sometimes annoying habit is the V sign. But some people pull that off too:-)

More Later!

Creative Driving

Just got into a horrific traffic jam in a taxi here. 10 minutes, no movement. The driver had gotten out pretty quickly, and as it turned out, not just to chat. He was negotiating with the two lines of parked trucks that locked us in to make some space, so he could move two lanes over. The next barrier was a 1-foot high curb, but nothing a few wood blocks could not overcome. With some directions from other drivers he got over that too, onto the clear slip road. What do you mean, traffic jam, and locked in by trucks?

More Hoi An

Looong overdue post... So let's catch up. Hội An first.



It's a UN Heritage site, and totally overrun by tourists and tourism. But I think it still retains a lot of its charm. Yes, there are about 15,000 shops selling lanterns (at about $2) or making shoes or clothing to order (avoid the cheapest ones - you get what you pay for). But those lantern shops are really pretty at night. The town somehow still has something magical.



And great food - probably the best we've found in Vietnam so far. Avoid the waterfront though. We really liked 'Morning Glory'.

Hoi An

From a recent trip to Hoi An (which we loved):



Maybe the great hotel had something to do with it.

But the town itself was very nice too. It somehow survives the deluge of tourists and the multitude of souvenir shops and keeps some character. And the food was amazing (the Cao Lau here is a must).

Highly recommended.

(I think the above shot works because of the low position - inches above the water. That way the pool runs all the way to the horizon.)