In this video
I head over to Amsterdam to take some panning pictures of cyclists!
AdoramaTV presents,
Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey.
Hello, I'm Gavin Hoey and you are watching AdoramaTV brought to you by Adorama,
the camera store that has everything for us photographers. Now you join me here today in
Amsterdam, Amsterdam is well known for a couple of things,
good weather not being one of them, but the thing we're interested in isn't the
one you're thinking about
its bicycles because today I'm going to do a panning shot of some bicycles
to really put some movement and excitement into what would be quite a static,
wet, rainy day picture. Now before I do this shoot
let's run through the set up. First of all I'm using my L Series lens
is raining, it's wet, this lens is weather sealed so that's probably a good
thing and there is a reason why I'm doing this in the rain you'll see why in a minute,
next is my camera settings so I'm going to shoot
in TV on a Canon or S on most other cameras,
shutter priority mode because I want to control the shutter speed
with panning that's what really makes the shot work because you can be moving
the camera
and tracking a moving subject. As far as focusing goes I don't want to be on
manual focus or auto focus
I want my camera to continuously refocus I'm going to go for
AI Servo or continuous autofocus.
Also my drive, I don't want one shot I'm going to take lots of pictures,
I'm not going to get it right the first time, its going to take me a few shots
so I'll be in high-speed shooting or continuous
shooting mode. Right that's the camera set
let's go find some moving subjects come with me.
So to photograph my cyclist I've just moved to a little bit closer to the road
where the
cyclists are usually a plenty, of course just as I stand here there are none but
they will be coming
don't worry! So shutter speed is the vital ingredient inside of shooting a
panning shot
and it's not a question of a certain shutter speed its a matter of choosing the
right shutter speed
for the lighting conditions, for the speed of your subject,
for the zoom that you're using, so what I can't tell you is one
setting that will work for everything. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start the
60th of a second and then I'm going to go slowly down
I'm probably going to go from strength 60th to a 30th, all we need is a few bikes.
So lets start with a 60th of a second, shutter priority mode
find a cyclist!
Here we go,
and you want to try and keep your movement nice and fluid as the cyclists go by.
I can see another one coming, they're coming.
Here we go!
Ok so a 60th was okay but lets drop it down to a 30th the second
I might take a couple of other shots there because I reckon 30th of a second for bicycles,
the speed they're going today is going to be perfect
Ok so a 30th of a second is my killer speed, that's what's giving me the
great movement in the background
but still giving me an ability to keep up the cyclists.
If I go any slower than a 30th of a second then it becomes very hard to her the
panning to be smooth with the flow of the cyclist and I end up with a picture thats a little but soft
and blurry. Its all about experimentation and not necessarily
just choosing one aperture or one shutter speed in this case and sticking with it
but going with the flow and trying a couple of different pictures, practice makes perfect
when it comes to panning, so
lets grab a few more pictures and see what else I can get.
Thats what I love about Amsterdam, cycling with an umbrella
So there we go, we got some great pictures of cyclists in the rain
here in Amsterdam all I need to do now is to get back in the dry,
back in my studio and let's see what we can do with the pictures, and we're going to do that right now!
It really didn't matter what the weather was doing in Amsterdam
there was always something to see and some great photographs to be had
and the panning shots of the bicycles, well if you've been to Amsterdam you know
there are bicycles
everywhere there so it was obvious choice to do.
Some of the pictures were great, others were less so and thats
all par for the course when you're doing panning not every picture is going to be a winner
but, I did get some good ones let's have a look. So this shot really sums up
everything I think panning in Amsterdam and bicycles, I love this shot
we've got this girl cycling through a busy street holding an umbrella,
wearing earphones it's perfect.
So I'm happy with the shot but the colors in the picture I think need a bit of work,
so there's these
really bright signs in the background that are little bit distracting, the
yellow and the blue one here
and a few bits of red that I'd like to, just to reduce the color
and there's couple ways I'm going to do it. Let's start with the most simple way,
I'm going to jump over to the HSL/Grayscale tab
and here I'll be working on the saturation
option and I can change the saturation or the intensity
of colors in my picture, so for example I can target the blues
and I can just sort of bring the blues down
or I can make the blues stronger by moving the slider side to side
and i'm looking at this sign here, now as I me it around it definitely takes away
the blue but
if you look around the picture you'll see all of the blues in the picture
are changing as well so this is a global adjustment,
everything changes and although I don't mind it in this case you do have to watch
these global adjustments,
I reckon I can lose a little bit of blue on the tram and not lose any impact in
the picture. There's a bit of green here so I think I can probably lose the greens in
the same way just
bring it down,I don't think there's much else that's green in this image and the way to tell
is just to throw it from side to side
and see what changes. But if I change the yellows
for that sign at the top, yeah I loose the yellows but I also loose some of the warmth
in the image
and I don't think that works for me I'm even losing some color
on her jacket. Same with the reds, if I do the reds
I loose the color in the scarf and that's not good. So some things I can
do globally
and other things I'm going to need to do locally. So how do I make a local adjustment
to my RAW file well it's the same in Adobe Camera RAW from Photoshop
and in Lightroom, the same tool applies, I'm going to use
the adjustment brush which is one of those really powerful tools
for doing little local adjustments. Now you'll find the adjustment brush
here Adobe camera RAW up here on the toolbar,
the adjustment brush and I can change a whole variety of different things from
exposure and contrasts,
clarity and saturation now that's the one I'm interested in.
So I'm just going to click on the minus button that will reset everything
and drop my saturation down to -50
and I can paint on this yellow sign and I can just pull the saturation down
just on that yellow sign and then I can go and target anything else so there's a red
thing here and there's a..., I'm not quite sure what that is but there is a little bit of red there that is a
bit obvious
and some red there and I'm just going to pull those down so they're less
obvious in the shot, there we go, and that works really well.
Now if you want to take it even further you can add another new brash
and again you can leave the saturation at 50 or you can change it further
I could further reduce the saturation or really fine tune it,
so maybe this one will have it at about -20 and we'll just further knock back a few of
those colors, there's a sort of
purpley blob there that can go and a few red bits.
So you can really take fine control over the colors
but still leave some of the colors in and of course if you really want to you can
add another new pin
and increase the saturation maybe just make that bag
a little bit more saturated just to pull-up the brown
tones within that little bag she's holding on her handlebars.
So there you go, there is my cyclist
in the rain, in Amsterdam shot panning picture completed.
Now if you want to find out more about
panning then don't forget to check out the Adorama Learning Center where there is tons
more information but, if you want to find out more videos from me
and the other amazing presenters here at AdoramaTV then
click on the subscribe button! I'm Gavin Hoey, thanks for watching!
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