Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV brought to you by Adorama
it's the camera store that has everything for
photographers like you and me well I'm
hanging out in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
at night in downtown by riverside,
it's where they this city comes to life. It has
all kinds of vendors and people moving
around and clubs and all kinds of really
interesting things and so I'm taking
a photo challenge to shoot all of this
craziness at night with no flash so it's
a low light challenge now we're going to
try to see all the different people that
we can talk to you and say hello and to
do this I have a translator Derek come
on over and so here this is Dara Rin
He's going to help talk to the
people that I can't talk to to make sure
we have permission and everything,
it's all good he is also going to make sure
that as we're filming so Matt is running
the camera right here nobody comes and
steals the cameras from either one of us
so let me just show you Matt so a lot of
people wonder how are we doing this
that's Matt was up there you go just to
make it clear that we do have extra sets
of eyes to make sure that somebody
doesn't come around and grab our stuff
we're using camera straps so I know a
lot of people ask about safety so the
key is don't go out alone if you're
going to do this all right so what we're
going to do is I'm going to increase my
ISO on my camera I'm shooting with my
Leica M I'm going to shoot almost
everything at 1.4 or maybe 2
I'm going to shoot with different lenses
35mm, a 21mm, a 50mm
and I'm going to shoot at different ISO settings
800, 1600, 3200
We're going to see what we get.
We're going to start by walking around,
talking to some vendors,
shooting some of this stuff
and learning some tricks of using some
of the light that's hidden
inside of these carts,
so let's get started.
In this setup
I'm facing a few challenges.
What I've done here, I'm using a 35mm lens
because I want to show all the fried frogs
and the squids and all that kind of stuff
and our vendor here, she's a very nice woman
and so I'm using a 35mm.
I'm manually at a 1/60th of a second,
f/2 ISO 800
Make sure that's right yeah 800
and one of the things I've noticed is
there's a light, that's right by her eyes
and as she's moving in and out of that
her face is getting darker and brighter
so I sort of have to wait for that light
to work. The other thing if we look right
down here there's a bed of hot coals
where they're been cooking and so I
almost burned myself on that and then
right beside me I don't know if you can
see this but there is lots of traffic so
I'm trying to avoid being smashed by
a car. Why are we doing this?
So it's just a ton of fun
and we're going to shoot some
more of this and see what we get
one of the things that we need to do
before we shoot anybody is get
permission and so we're asking is it
okay if we shoot can you ask if it's
alright oh okay okay so he said it's
okay for us to shoot and so I'm going to
use this light right here to illuminate
in his face oh he's giving us treats no
you eat it for a second I want to shoot first.
Okay you see if I can get this
really quickly, we're shooting with a
really slow shutter speed here beautiful
I love with the flame, I love that,
wonderful!
Excellent, excellent I love it.
I'll show him what we're doing,
here you are.
These are snails and eggs
snails and eggs do you eat the snails?
Yeah sure.
I'm not going to I'm just going to take a couple
of pictures here and notice that this is
our this is an LED light strip here
and that's going to be the only light.
Hey where are you going?
You have to come back
Our subject just left but if he sits here
this is going to illuminate him
so if I shoot where Matt is right now
I think we'll get a really cool shot of the snails
and the eggs in the foreground
and our subject back here, so yeah have a seat
so I'm going to shoot, Dara is just making sure
none of these bikes hit me
and we will see what we get,
so I'm shooting everything in manual mode
because things tend to get wonky
when I get lights from
the background, that kind of stuff,
so this is exactly what I want this is a
wide-angle lens. This is a 35mm
so I'm getting close and I'm shooting
a lot I don't want my model to pose here
this is real life stuff,
there we go.
Snails and tiny crabs.
Who doesn't like a snail in a tiny crab?
Mmm, yummy once again we have this light
providing all the light for our scene here.
I am not brave enough to have some
of this food but maybe later.
I just notice behind me there is this hotel
and a boat going by on the river here
and that it's going to be really awesome
because all we have these reflections on
the water, so if I shoot that at a really
slow shutter speed we should have some
really nice light leaks
and I've got my tiny Coleman tripod
to make sure that my camera doesn't move
so I'm going to set this up down here
and then I'm going to get
a little bit dirty. Frame everything up
and see what we get,
so I am shooting
right now at f, I'm going to shoot
at about f/5.6
I'm focusing at infinity.
This is going to give me
a one and a half second shutter speed.
That's close to level.
Another one of the things I love to do
in low-light is Pan and that that means
is I'm setting my ISO to ISO 800
it's sort of high,
I have my aperture opened
all the way up to f/2
to let in a lot of light
but even in these lighting
situations it's really dark
which means I can use a really slow shutter speed
so right now I have my shutter set
to 1/8th of a second. I'm shooting in manual mode
and what I can do is I can find
a motorcycle or tooktook or a car
and I can track that
and that means that my camera
and my subject are moving at the
same speed, but the background
is going to be blurred and because across the
street we have these really cool trees
with all the lights on them those are
going to blur it's going to be a really
colorful scene so I'm going to shoot a few
of these. Panning can take a little while
to get right so I'll probably have a few
blurry images but all I need is one
that's going to be spectacular
so I'm going to do that right now.
So we're walking down the street
and I've noticed that there's a lot of
people that are having their evening meal
and so hopefully I can find
somebody that will let me take their
pictures. We've got some lights that are
sort of hanging on some stands here
and I think it'll be a really interesting
shot to show sort of what life is like
and Phnom Penh at night.
Is it's okay if I take your picture?
Is that good okay.
Yeah you can, awesome
I found a balcony here that overlooks
a really busy intersection
and so what I want to do is use a really slow shutter
speed to get some light streaks of all
these cars and tooktooks zipping around,
so what I've done here is I have set my
ISO down to ISO 200.
I have cranked my aperture closed,
it is at an aperture setting of f/16
and that means that my exposure here
is going to be about sixty seconds,
my camera is on aperture priority mode,
it's going to try to go as
long as it can using a cable release
and I have this on my little Coleman tripod,
so I'll take a few shots
and we're going to get some really interesting results
from this balcony overlooking the intersection.
Well I had a blast tonight zipping
around Phnom Penh and seeing all the
nightlife. Dara thank you so much
for being security and helping out
translating and all that kind of stuff.
So you've been an invaluable help you
know, one of the fun things
about shooting at night is just experimenting
you'll notice that I shot some things
with a really wide open aperture
but I also shot some things with a closed aperture.
I shot things at a high ISO
and low ISO, so you can use any of your
settings, just play with it.
Get out at night,
get a tripod and have a lot of fun.
You'll see that it is a total blast.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV,
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so click on the link right now,
Dara did it so you could do it too
and we will see you again next time.