The long, wide Chandni Chowk street which is flanked by narrow alley ways, small markets and stalls selling everything from books to saris, is perhaps one of Old Delhi’s more famous attractions.

Flanked at one end by the majestic Red Fort, who size and unusual red stone make it an imposing destination in its own right and at the other by the less substantial but equally bewitching Fatehpuri Masjid – an old Mosque and Madrassa – it is a location rich in cultural diversity, opportunity and local colour.

Gavin Gough had kindly recommended a route and pointed out a couple of specific locations, but for the large part I wondered happily down dark, dirty alleyways, content to explore on whim anything that looked unusual or different.

One of the first places that you come to of any great importance is a large Sikh Temple. The temple itself was functional rather than beautiful, but I did use the vantage point it provided to take some pictures of the street below (see the first picture in this post).

Each day inside the large temple kitchens, food is prepared by an army of volunteers, coordinated by temple officials, dressed in their wonderful orange robes. Cooking is undertaken on an industrial scale, using the largest pan you have ever seen (above) to make great vats of dahl, followed by a room full of women rolling and making the local bread and a team diligently peeling hundreds of Potatoes.

This is a community at work. They could not have been more welcoming and I spent a happy half an hour makes dough balls and rolling them out whilst chatting to the woman, before I picked up my camera and took some images.

After carrying on down the street I turned left into a narrow road, where Gavin had previously photographed a wonderful but tiny blue bookstore. When I was there the owner had changed the usage form a bookstore to a tiny Clothes store, but the vibrancy of the colors and it unusual size still made a fun image.

From there I stopped for a much need cup of masala chai, before heading down another narrow alleyway to a particular spot that Gavin had recommended for panning. You can see a couple of my images below. The street was only about 10 feet across, and with motorbikes, rickshaws and pedestrians giving and taking no quarter – especially not to a photographer – I had to put a wide-angle lens on and press myself to the wall to try and give myself enough room to take the shots.

From there a windy route through the tiny streets , each of which in turn presented opportunities, until I finally arrived at Fatehpuri Masjid – a beautiful mosque and madrassa, but which I will leave as the subject of tomorrow’s post.

Do share your thoughts. Perhaps you’ve been there and have a similar picture to share? If you want to see the full collection then either check it out on facebook, flickr or see them all in my image archive from the menu above.

I struggled yesterday whilst shooting the sombre Killing Fields and S-21 Genocide museum (read the post and watch the multimedia slide show) as my trusty Canon 5dMk2 became less trusty and began to play up. By the end of the day I could only use liveview otherwise I got ISO 3200 and 32 sec exposure whatever setting I chose

I wanted to complete my time here with some more atmospheric shots of the capital, Phnom Penh. I had the idea of getting some monks in the dawn light against the yellow wall of the Royal Palace, and then perhaps going into the markets, before ending up this evening with some city nights capes. I made the mistake of not doing my research. I chose a spot where I had seen lots of monks on the previous days, and waited patiently, only to find this Sunday they had all boarded buses at dawn to go to some festival! In 3 hours I saw one monk (above).

However The camera thought otherwise. It is now officially dead or, in the words of Monty Python: “it is an ex camera. It has ceased to be!”

I am hoping that I can get it fixed this coming week in Singapore, in time to explore Bangkok next weekend, but as a result these few images are what I managed to do this morning.

Panning using Live view is clearly an art form and one I need to practice! Of the 100 images only these 3 made it to anything like what I had hoped for. I hadn’t realized how comfortable I felt just sing the viewfinder!

]]> http://www.marcoryanphotography.com/cambodia-postcards-from-phnom-penh/feed/ 4 http://www.marcoryanphotography.com/more-panning-tips-from-a-day-with-mr-panning/ http://www.marcoryanphotography.com/more-panning-tips-from-a-day-with-mr-panning/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:38:31 +0000 Marco Ryan http://www.marcoryanphotography.com/?p=735 I blogged a few weeks back about my attempts to master panning, and of course as part of the 1 on 1 workshop with Gavin Gough that I blogged about yesterday, I took every opportunity to quiz the master – Mr Panning himself – on some more tips!

I felt a little indulgent standing for 20-30 minutes trying pan after pan when there was so much going on around me, but allocating at least this type of time, Gavin explained, is how you master the technique, and how you capture that compelling image.

So I thought I would share a few images as I progressed through the tips that follow. Clearly the early images are not ones that I would normally publish and I have not made any adjustments – they are exactly as shot, but some of you might find it helpful in understanding the tip or learning not what to do! There is a slideshow further down too of more images.

Panning too quickly meant my framing was just off

Gavin taught me a couple of extra things that were really helpful, and I want to share with you. I won’t repeat my earlier post about the settings – 10 tips for mastering panning – the distance, the stance etc – but do read this as it is an integral part of how to master panning – but Gavin did share me with 4 additional tips, the first of which was how to set-up my custom functions correctly, to allow me to rapidly move to panning mode.

I am a Canon user – but I know Nikon will have something similar – so I have 3 custom settings I can record on my Canon 5d Mark II, so I set up C3 for panning. The first thing to do was to set up the camera for a “generic” panning shot – a starting point, if you like.

I switched to TV mode, selected a shutter speed of 1/30, and changed the AF-Drive settings to AI servo and multi-shot. I put the ISO on Automatic, and evaluative metering. Then I went into the Main Menu options and selected from the Yellow settings menu, Custom User Setting>Register, and stored under Mode Dial:C3.

This meant that when I was shooting something in say AV mode on a fixed ISO, with single shot and spot metering and I saw an amazing panning opportunity, I had just 1 turn of the main mode switch, to C3, to be set up for panning. It all means there is just less to worry about – let the camera do the work!

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Mistakenly focusing on the elbow not the face has reduced the impact

The second tip was obvious once Gavin had said it. Keep your focus point welded to the bit you want to stay sharp, throughout the pan. Easier said than done mind you, but this is what will make the face or the hands or the flower that you are focusing on jump out of the picture.

The third tip was to also consider panning in low-light situations, using a flash. The only additional setting here is to select second—curtain shutter for your flash, so that any light trails are behind the subject being panned, not in front! You need to turn the flash down probably 1 or 2 stops – enough to create the effect, but not enough to startle the poor man on his moped with some blinding X-Files like light!

The fourth tip was to pre-select the focal length to the aesthetic you want in the final picture and stick with it. Lets say you have a 24-70mm lens, and you want to take the final shot with the subject large enough in the frame to be interesting, but sill with some negative space or composition elements to make a compelling shot. When you track to the right or left to start your pan, the subject will seem tiny at that focal length. Don’t be tempted to re-adjust the focal length. Leave it on that pre-determined setting, focus on the subject – keeping that focal point on the key area of sharpness that you want – and pan at the same speed as the subject. As the subject reaches your pre-determined point, press the shutter. This sounds obvious, right? I can’t tell you how many times I found myself adjusting the focal length as I was panning!!

Playing around with the flash - not quite there yet!

After that it really is trial and error, making tiny adjustments to the flash or the shutter, depending on the light or the speed of the subject. As you can see from the images in my slideshow, it is harder than it sounds, or maybe I should say I found it harder than it seems!

Practice really does make perfect in the case of panning, and boy, do I need to practice! If you want to see some great examples then head over to Gavin’s blog an check them out.

Pulling it all together, for a decent Panning shot

I had a free couple of hours this morning, so I went out into the chaos that is mid-morning Cairo, and stood on a street corner for a couple of hours – always an interesting experience! Other than getting a couple of locals insisting that I moved location once or twice, the morning went reasonably well.

The fruits of my labour are below. Not perfect by a long measure, but an improvement on before and certainly I feel that I am getting more comfortable with the positioning of the subject in the panning frame, selecting the right shutter speed and finally, today, some progress on the focusing. In the six images below you can see how I start out very shaky – literally – with off centre framing. As the morning progresses I get in closer and manage to get the subject more central and the focus more accurate. By the end of the morning – the 6th shot below of the red vespa – I had bought together the combination of background, subject, shutter speed and framing and was even getting a little cocky and tilting the camera to try and vary the composition.

It was great fun and time well spent, although surprisingly tiring and it made me realize that this is a technique that I have only just scratched the surface of! Lots more practice required!

Well the truth is, I think I may have mastered the theory…just not its application. For those of you who were kind enough to read my previous posts on the outcome of my review with Ami Vitale, you could say I have mastered the science of panning, just not the art. But since photogrpahy is all about applying the science to create the art, I thought I would continue my trend of sharing the nuggets of advice that I am given as I journey to become a more competent photographer, but also in the hope that it might prove useful information for you and others.

When I was doing some research online, I found lots of information about the basics of panning spread over a wide range of sources, but no concise or easily digestible set of tips – no “a-ha” ideas that would be some secret sauce to successful panning. In fact the most useful tip I got was not from the web at all, but from Matt Brandon (aka The Digital Trekker), who was humble enough to admit that it was Gavin Gough whom had given him the idea!

So as I researched, I jotted down a quick checklist to help improve my chances, because the one thing that all the different sources agreed on was that getting panning right was definitely an art and required lots of practice. So here is the list I collated, pompously entitled “10 tips for mastering panning”, in the vein hope that it might help with my SEO ranking!

1. Go on a 1 day workshop with “Mr Panning”, Gavin Gough. Okay so not all of us can get to Bangkok in the next few months to be able to make this happen, but I did run my checklist by Gavin, and with his blessing, I have included much of his wisdom in this post.
2. Camera Setting: Set the camera to shutter priority mode: TV mode (Canon) or S (Nikon).
3. Shutter Speed: Use the following starting shutter speeds as a guide for different types of panning:

People running – about 1/15th sec.
People walking – about 1/8th sec (NB watch out for increased camera shake!)
Horses/donkey/animals/bicycles etc about 1/15th sec -1/25th sec depending on speed
Motorbikes/Tuk-Tuks/Scooters/Camels about 1/30th sec

4. Drive Mode: Set to multiple exposure if you have it (like a motor-wind). This will allow you to not “lock-up” at the critical moment of pressing the shutter, although you will end up with 20-30 frames – which if you are anything like me, you then can delete about 20-30 of them immediately – but it will increase your chances of getting a great shot especially early on in your panning experience.
5. Stance: This was the tip that Matt Brandon/Gavin Gough shared. Stand at 90 degrees to the line the subject will travel along, with your feet firm. Then rotate your upper body around to where the subject will start from. It feels a little awkward, but as you pan with the subject, so the arc of travel is smooth all the way through the panning, without an awkward twist midway through.
6. Composition: The subject can either be in the centre of frame , although off-centre can work just as well with panning, but then you need to adjust the focusing point to ensure that it’s going to fall over the subject as you’re panning. So move it to the left or the right of the frame, depending on where you think the subject will be. It’s often easier to get the subject in the centre though.
7. Background selection. Choose an interesting background with good colors that will create a nice blurred effect in te final image to help re-inforce the motion in your shot. If you look at my two camel pictures, the image with the red truck is more interesting, but unfortunately the focus is not as good as the second image.
8. Exposure: If you’re shooting against a pre-defined background with consistent lighting then switch to Manual and get the exposure correct by just pointing the camera at the scene where you want to catch the panned object and taking a meter reading. Take a frame, check histogram and adjust manual exposure. Otherwise adjust your exposure as normal after taking some test shots.
9 Focus. If you set the exposure manually, pre-focus and switch to manual focus then all you have to worry about is getting the person/camel/scooter in the frame. Otherwise use the AI servo mode on Canon or the continuous servo AF on a Nikon.
10.Dry Run. Do a couple of dry runs without actually taking a shot. Gavin told me that  ”It’s that “click” that makes people stop moving the camera. Think back to cricket nets, golf driving-range or tennis coaching, it’s all in the follow-through.” This is where the stance and the drive mode can really help, as you can swing through in a smooth arc and not worry about judging the critical moment.

The other piece of wisdom which you will recognise as soon as you go and try is that panning is REALLY HARD! So it does require lots and lots of practise.

So how did I get on?

Well you can see from the images included in this post that I had mixed results. Whilst sometimes I got my panning or my shutter speed right, I then forgot about my composition! The subject is either too early in the frame, there are other distracting elements or the background does not really work or I needed to crop more tightly to get a sense of more involvement.

I did learn that camels bob up and down as they run forwards, which make great panning shots almost impossible as you have two axis of motion to contend with! Secondly the faster a subject is moving (and I am not suggesting that Formula 1 racing cars are therefore the easiest thing to shoot!), the smoother my panning was. For example, the motorbike shots seem to be consistently better in terms of focus and panning effect, whereas the one of the camel herder running is less compelling as there is some camera shake involved too. Whilst the red truck in the second shot of the camel make a much more dynamic picture, the people in the foreground left distract and the camel needs sharper focus. In the first camel picture the sense of motion is there, but now the background is wrong and perhaps the point of focus should have been more on the camel rider rather than the camel.

Ho hum! It’s all part of the learning experience.

The best outcome  though of this was that my confidence increased enormously.  If ever you needed proof that obsessing about technique does not lead to great photographs then my morning session doing panning is living proof! Whilst understanding the “science” or theory helped to ensure the “mystique” of great panning was removed, it reinforced the realization that to get really good at this was going to require practice. A lot of practice!