Panning and Zooming

We were scheduled to go for a family picnic at my brother's orchard in Rawang on Saturday morning. As we were supposed to convene at the picnic area only after 10 am, I decided to spend some times to capture morning sunrise before going for the Nasi Lemak breakfast at Ali Corner with my other half. It was few minutes past seven and the condition was partially clear as the sun will only rise at 7.27am. I wanted to capture the sunrise from a good spot within BJ and decided that the main road going uphill near Jalan Kubah will be the ideal location for that.

We parked the car at Jalan Jendela and I took out my monopod and quickly set-up the camera using the 90-300mm zoom lens. Unfortunately, luck was not at our side as the rising sun was blocked by heavy cloud and made it quite impossible for me to compose a good frame. Feeling a bit down, I snapped a few photos of the horizon but could not be proud with any of them :-(( Nonetheless, I feel obliged to post the pics at least one just to convey kinda melancholy mood early Saturday morning.


With the sun still hiding behind the cloud, I decided to try out the 'pan and zoom' technique on the passing cars along Jalan Jendela and later on Persiaran Singgahsana. It took me several tries before I can adjust myself on panning and zooming at moving objects. Really, the objective of doing this is to get the auto focus mechanism to work properly and to achieve reasonable sharpness of the moving target while creating the surrounding objects blur.

Out of so many shots, the few that I posted in this blog are reasonably good at least to me as I managed to get the moving cars quite sharp while the rest were blurred hinting speed.The shots were taken from the distance of 30m to 80m utilising the 90-300mm zoom lens fully.

Honestly, I like the shot of the BMW the most as it gives the clearest picture of the car while blurred subjects creates a feeling of moving very fast, although, I think the speed of the BMW was only between 30-40 KPH going downhill.



Although the pictures only tell that I have a lot to learn on this technique, I feel a bit happier now that I finally understand what pan and zoom mean on those photographic magazines I have read!

I am also very eager to try out some shots on flowing water to create the 'angelic' feeling. Since the family picnic is to be held by the small river nearby my brother's orchard, this is an opportunity not to be missed. Thus, off we go...

Playing with Lights

Night photography is an art which is not easy to master. Recently, I decided to test out my understanding on this type of photography on top of the overhead bridge crossing the Guthrie Expressway and linking BJ and TTDI Jaya.

I tested with Time-priority setting letting the camera to select the best aperture, and added +1/3 stop to enhance the exposure. Most of the pictures I took were set between 20 to 30 second shutter speed and most importantly, with my tripod properly set-up to avoid image blurring.

All these photos were shot just before 10PM and there were actually many cars on the roads albeit from the photos we can see none. This is the beauty of prolonging the shutter opening where images of moving objects will 'dissappear' and what's left are 'trail of lights' in red and white.I did not really have a 'perfect' angle to shoot the pictures as I was standing on the bridge and there was very little distance between me and the road behind. While I was busy snapping pictures, my other half was waiting patiently in the car parked about 50m away, just before the bridge.

I also took some daylight photos of Guthtrie Pavillion and the minaret of Masjid Shah Alam. Daylight photos are much easier to snap. In these photos, I also used Time Priority setting mostly between 1/125s to 1/60s with the aperture decided by the camera.

I have yet to use the aperture bracketing function. I have read about image recomposition using aperture braketting for condition with varying brightness.Under such condition, for instance snapping an object with the lens facing bright light, it is very important to ensure enough light can illuminate the blocked object to avoid underexposure.


If the object is closed enough, the fill-in flash can be used. Otherwise, one has to adjust the exposure setting such that the main object is nicely exposed and thats where the aperture bracketting comes into play.I am very eager to try out this technique and this will be my next small project hopefully sooner rather than later!

"Correct Exposure is a simple combination of three factors: aperture, shutter speed and ISO" - Bryan Peterson on Understanding Exposure..