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.

Shot with Olympus PEN E-P3 and Minolta MD Rokkor 50mm f/1.7. At ISO 200, lens aperture was set to f/11 if I remember correctly. That was to allow the shutter speed to go down to 1/20 sec for panning purpose.

Shooting Tuk Tuk at night in Bangkok is fun and the only way to make it much more interesting is to pan it using a used Panasonic GF1 with 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens. OK, I am exaggerating, I know. I am showing off my new “used” gadget, I know. But this little guy which I got two weeks ago at ~S$500 cheaper compared to when buying it new can really do wonder. It won’t replace my Canon 1DIV, but there will be times that I prefer to bring this guy with me instead of my 1DIV. It’s small, it’s light, it’s powerful and it has bokeh!

More on Panasonic GF-1 in my next post. I will try to write a practical review about the camera. Not a pixel peeping review which most of us don’t care anyway, but just a practical review of what I will use it for. So stay tuned.

A Biker on Victoria Street, Singapore

Shooting at high ISO is sometimes necessary, especially when shooting in low light condition and if you are like me, prefer not to use flash. Bumping up the ISO to 800, 1600 or even 3200 is fine if that helps you achieve a higher shutter speed to help freeze the subject and reduce the handshake. Current generation of digital cameras produce wonderful pictures at high ISO with very minimal noise. Let’s forget about pixel peeping. I am not shooting for a cover of fashion magazine. Few of the latest digital cameras have high ISO up to 12800 and 25600. You don’t have to go that extreme of course, but if you own one of those cameras, just don’t forget that you have that option if you have to.

Do not worry about the noise produced by the high ISO setting, because to me, they are just bigger colourful pixels.

Shooting at high ISO in low light condition without flash gives you the advantage of using a high enough shutter speed to freeze the movement of the subjects.

Unless a special effect is intended, it is better to have a sharp grainy picture rather than a smooth picture with no noise but the subject is blur.

The above image of a biker on Victoria Street in Singapore was lit only by the street lights which were quite dim. The aperture used was f2.8 and at ISO 3200, the manual exposure metering gave me a shutter speed of 1/30 sec. I used the panning technique to shoot the subject and was happy with the result. I know that when you re-size an image shot at high ISO, the noise will either go away or reduce significantly, so you can’t really see the noise in the above picture, but I hope I made a point that to be able to have ideal shutter speed for dimly lit subject like the above, you need to bump up the ISO.