Panning is a technique used to shoot a subject moving parallel to you. It is used to create a sense of movement by moving the camera to follow the subject. It will blur the background / surrounding objects while keeping the main subject in focus.

The choice of shutter speed is important in panning photography. For the subjects in the images below, the shutter speed I used was between 1/15 to 1/30 sec. It can’t be too slow as it will blur the subject itself and it can’t be too fast as it may freeze the subject (and the background/surrounding objects) too quickly. I always use Manual metering when shooting panning, as I need to be able to control all three components manually (shutter speed, aperture and ISO).

All images shot in India (Lucknow and New Delhi) with Leica M9 and Voigtlander Color Skopar 35mm f/2.5 during my trip there in October last year. They were shot in various lighting conditions, from bright to dark at night.

One of my favorite things to do when in Jakarta, eating the street food. Forget about hygiene. Just close your eyes, pray and eat.  Just before I took this shot, the guy in blue on the left, who was selling varieties of cold desserts, just dropped a block of ice when I was placing my order. He left it on the road for about 30 sec because he was serving someone else. He then picked it up and walked to the back of that yellow banner. I thought he was going to throw away that block of ice, but he just quickly rinsed it with water. I just smiled, because the next order he was going to make was mine. 

The above panorama was shot in Serpong using the AutoStitch app on my iPhone 4s.Happy Chinese New Year! Keep shooting guys!

You can really take amazing iPhone photos using that little device that was Designed by Apple in California and Assembled in China. Sorry, I know I have been talking about it for some days, but I am still amazed with how all these technologies have changed our life or changed the way we do things.

The above is a panorama, 4 images stitched into 1, using the AutoStitch app. Shot from 48th floor through the glass window. You can see a bit of reflection on the glass but I am fine with that. I can’t ask for the window to be opened, anyway. 

The original was in color and I converted it to black and white in Adobe Lightroom. I think I should coin a new word: iphonorama.

Here are my favourite and best iPhone photography / best instagram images .. so far.

Camera phone still cannot beat its big brothers, like the DSLR or even some of the compacts. Maybe it never will, but who knows, technology will only get better. But for now, the convenience of having a good little camera in my pocket all the time is wonderful since I cannot always be carrying the DSLR or the M9 or even the smaller Micro Four-Thirds camera, like the Olympus E-P3 or Panasonic GF-1.

Oh, by the way, thank you to those who have been asking about my mum. Thank God that she is now home, recovering well.

The mobile phone technology has advanced so much that the combination of powerful processor and many excellent photography apps has created an opportunity for us to be more creative while on the go. I just wish the iPhone battery technology will also advance so it can last for at least 12 hours of shooting before I come home and charge it. OK, minus the breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee breaks, maybe 8 hours of non stop shooting.

The following two images below touched me a lot. I saw her couple weeks back in Little India when I accompanied my cousin to shoot there. She’s easily 70+ years old and she was pushing a cart full of flattened boxes. She probably collected those unused boxes from somewhere and was going to sell them for some cash. She crossed the road to move to the other side. A car passed by, much faster than her as you can tell from the blurry image of the car. Human vs Machine. To put things in perspective, the things I complain about in my life do not seem bad at all.

Here is another one from that morning shoot in Little India. A man crossing the road on his bike. It’s black and white, but if you can tell from the position, he crossed when the red man was still on. 

The following were taken during my recent trip to Bali in December for a short family vacation. Taken mainly in Kuta. They were processed by the Instagram app and couple other iPhone apps on the iPhone itself. Beautiful Kuta sunset.

I did very little post processing to the image below. Only bumped up the contrast a little bit and cropped to square format. Amazing phone camera.

The famous war photographer, Robert Capa, once said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you are not close enough.” When I saw waves crashing onto the rocks along the Kuta beach, I thought it would be cool if I could take some shots. To get the impact, I need to be close. Really close. And my newly bought iPhone 4s (it was less than a week when I brought it to Bali with me) was splashed with the salt water. Yummy. But I managed to quickly clean it up. It’s still functioning until now. Please don’t tell Apple when one day it stops working and I will go to claim the warranty. 

This one was taken in the morning. Beautiful morning. Clear blue sky and the beach chairs were just waiting for tourists to sit on them. And … can you see the moon right in the center of the top part? The full resolution image shows that very  clearly.

And this one was really a lucky shot. I was in the car when I shot this on a rainy day in Kuta. The car window was wet, lots of water droplets. I saw the couple waiting at the shelter from afar and I focused on the water droplets and took the shot when our car passed by them.

I tried to use the iPhone to shoot moving subjects. These beach boys were playing soccer. I was standing on a big rock, which you can tell from the angle of the shots.

And some more moving subjects.  The cousins.

And last one from Kuta, the model in Bali. 

Shooting moving subjects indoor with iPhone is challenging since we can’t really control the shutter speed. Hence, when shooting indoor and the light is not bright enough to give you fast shutter speed to freeze the movement, the subjects will be blurry. But I still love these images of the two little monkeys jumping on the bed. I tried to minimize the blur by “clicking” the shutter button when they were at the peak of their jump.

When shooting portrait with iPhone, try to zoom in in order to minimize the distortion. iPhone has a wide lens and shooting portrait with wide lens won’t be pleasing, especially when you are too close to the subject. So, zoom in.

Few more portrait shots. These were taken at the Universal Studios. I love the setting they have there.

I seem to be addicted to shooting from inside a car on a rainy day. These two shots of cabs were shot when I was in another cab on the highway. The wet car window caused the distortion, which I like.

You should have seen these two in my previous post, but let me post them again here, because they are my favorites too. The panorama, shot with the excellent AutoStitch app.

And last but not least, I love leaf on the ground. You guys have known that from my previous posts. So, this will continue with my iPhone.

So, that’s it for now. See you in the next batch of my favorite images taken with the iPhone. You all keep shooting !!

I am writing this from a hospital room where I slept last night to accompany my mum. She has been hospitalised since yesterday and is now recovering from the sedation she just had. She was sedated for a procedure.

The instagram photo above is of the cover of a book that I bought late last year and have not finished reading it yet. Is my life really waiting for me? My present life has been good and I have been blessed with many good things. So, I am thankful for that. But I do know that I have put aside what I like doing and spend less time on it. It’s the photography, in case it’s not obvious to you.

When is the logical break for me to shift and do it full time? I am actually not sure if there would be such thing called “the right time”. But realistically, I do need to have a plan, just like any other things you want to do in life.

So, let’s see what 2012 will bring me. I hope to come back to this blog entry when I review how I am doing in this space.

Creating a very wide image, known as panoramic photograph, will cost you a bomb if you are using a specialized panoramic camera, like the Fuji GX617, Linhof 617SIII and Hasselblad XPan. But thanks to modern image processing technology, you can now create a panoramic photograph using any camera and stitch multiple images together using panoramic photography software like AutoPano Pro, PanoramaPlus, PTGui, EasyPano, Panorama Factory and many others in the market. And if you own a Canon digital camera, you will have a free software from Canon that will allow you to stitch images to create a panoramic photograph. Some of these software are pretty advanced and can really create a high quality panoramic photograph.

But, thanks to technology again, both on software and hardware, many of you can now create a panoramic photograph on the go. You can shoot multiple images and let the software stitch them all together for you. And while it’s stitching the images, you can still receive a phone call from your loved ones on the same device, checking where you are. So, guys, if you own an iPhone running iOS 4 or later (mine is the iPhone 4s running iOS 5), buy this app called AutoStitch that only cost  you US$ 1.99 and you have a little panoramic machine in your pocket.

These two panoramic images of the Singapore Marina Bay were shot using the iPhone 4s and stitched using AutoStitch app. The second one below was taken 23 minutes after the first one above (7.03pm and 7.26pm). The light changing fast after sunset and the “twilight zone” caused the sky to become more bluish. The iPhone seemed to increase the ISO automatically and hence you can see the one below is a little more grainy than the above. But, I guarantee if you print it, you won’t really notice those grains.

Pretty impressive huh? So, go out have fun and create panoramic images using your iPhone. Don’t just play Angry Birds. 

I was at Takashimaya, Orchard Road earlier this afternoon after meeting my cousin. It was raining heavily. I decided to shoot while my wife and daughter were sitting inside to rest their legs after few hours of walking earlier. I borrowed my wife umbrella and started walking to shoot some pictures. Umbrella in one hand and my Olympus PEN E-P3 with 12mm f/2 lens in another hand. The camera was a bit wet since the rain was too heavy for the umbrella to cover. I hope it didn’t do any damage to it.

This is one the shots I took and it’s probably the best I took this afternoon. Hope everyone had a great weekend.

I went to Haji Lane with my family this afternoon to smoke shisha .. I mean to eat ice cream. I found this guy enjoying his shisha by himself. Photo taken using the new Olympus E-PL3 and Canon 35mm LTM f/2 lens. I had to use two adapter in order to use this lens on E-PL3. First was the M39 to M mount and then M to Micro Four Thirds mount.

Olympus sent me the E-PL3 for testing and review last week. I only got a chance to bring it out today. First impression, it’s too small for me, hence the handling wasn’t that comfortable. But for those with small hands, this could be perfect as compared to E-P3. The E-PL3 uses the same sensor and processor as E-P3, hence image quality should be the same and it’s about USD 200 cheaper. Will post more photos later.

They have mastered the art of fixing the teeth problems. It’s a piece of cake. Can be done with just bare hands  or with simple tools under the hot sunny day on a roadside. They are the Street Dentist of Bangalore.

A quick check on my Mac’s dictionary: dentist |ˈdentist| (abbr.: dent.) – noun – a person qualified to treat the diseases and conditions that affect the teeth and gums, esp. the repair and extraction of teeth and the insertion of artificial ones.

See … it doesn’t say that it has to be done at a hospital or clinic. It’s us who are just too paranoid and don’t mind being overcharged because they need to cover the cost for the air-conditioned room, nice sofa, TV, coffee machine, etc. Who need hospital or clinic? Hehe  

And by the way, they help each other too during the process.

All images taken with Leica M9 and Zeiss Planar 50mm ZM during my trip to Bangalore in June this year. Enjoy the photos.

Looks like they can do root canal surgery too.

This is the fourth installment of my Olympus PEN E-P3 review, the latest Micro Four Thirds camera from Olympus. If you miss the first three, check them out here, here and here. I shot the images here using the two kit lenses 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 and 40-150mm f/4-5.6. All photos here are the JPEG straight out of the camera with no post-processing. I just re-sized them for web viewing.

I mentioned in my first review, that I am not a fan of zoom lenses with variable apertures like the two kit lenses here. I like to control the aperture when I am shooting. I don’t want the lens to change the aperture by itself as I zoom in, as in the case of these two kit lenses. This does not mean that these two kit lenses are bad. It’s just my personal preference to use zoom lenses that have constant largest aperture throughout the focal length. The lenses can still give you great images. And unfortunately Olympus does not have option to sell you body only, so you have to get one of the kit lenses. 

I also mentioned about the option of built-in Art Filters in my first review. There are tonnes of them, but I like this Grainy Film Filter the most. It will automatically shoot in black and white for you, add some grains and the optional sloppy border. Cool huh. The black and white conversion may not be perfect, but it has good shadow and highlight. I like the contrast of its black and white conversion. You will see lots of them in this post, i.e. all those black and white photos. The grains are a bit too much in some of them, because the ISO was already high due to lighting and aperture (I couldn’t go to f/2 like when I used the 12mm f/2 lens) and the Grainy Film Filter added some more grains. Some of the black and white images are also over-exposed, but that’s because of user error, i.e. my mistake. I couldn’t see the LCD clearly when I brought the camera down to my waist level when shooting some of the images. I am interested to see how I can correct the RAW files when Adobe Lightroom has updated its RAW engine later.

So, if you are looking for a camera that can give you higher image quality than those compact cameras, this is one option for you. It’s really a consumer’s market now. We are all pampered by the many options of interchangeable lens cameras in the market now. If you don’t want the big bulky DSLR, but still want an interchangeable lens camera, you are living in the right time. Be grateful. 

Enjoy the images.