I'd not tried this technique with the digital camera before, but i'm quite pleased with these. They manage to make a rather mundane DMU exciting! Both taken yesterday at a rather gloomy Exeter Central, these are class 153 units, one heading to, and one heading from Exmouth. One interesting thing.... The class 153 single car units used to be class 155 two car units, notice the differences between the two cabs, the one where the door is nearer the car end used to be the inner end of the set, and a cab was built in what used to be a vestibule! [ 17. December 2002, 22:12: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
Great shot Martyn. I've always been a fan of the blurred background shot. May I ask how many times you have tried this? I know I have plenty of times with mixed results... hehe.
With a 35mm I have had mixed results, but I know that if I do a batch of them I'll get a couple that are usable, these were my first two attemps on my new digital. They were kind of inspired by having the "too dark to take non-flash handheld pics" icon come up on the screen, so I thought I would give those a go. Central has platforms sized for 12 car trains, so these single car units are moving quite well at the other end of the platforms I'll try and find one i've done with 35mm to compare.
First time I did a good panning shot was of a Gresley A4 just after bursting out of Stoke Tunnel on the 1 in 200 down to Grantham. Ah! Those were the days!
These are not easy shots to take and there is always some luck involved. Good first try with the digital. I have had my digital about 6 months now an I am still getting used to the different timing--having to anticipate more on each shot.
Panning while shooting is difficult enough with a camera that takes the picture when you want it too. With the digital that seems to take it when it wants too is even more interesting. I applaud your efforts and enjoyed them. The few panning shots with digital on my part are no where near as nice as the two you posted. Thanks for keeping that technique out where some of us will remember to try it. Greg Elems
My current digital (Canon A40) seems to have a much shorter delay than my previous one (Olympus C-960) which I guess helps! The delay on that old one really annoyed me, it was difficult to photograph a specific vehicle in a train as it passed without missing part of it!
Very nice! Could you go into a bit of detail on how one accomplishes this effect or at least how you did it with your digital? I have never tried this before. Russ
Russ, i'll give it a go. First you need to pick your location, you need a place with a wide open area between you and the train, as you need to be able to follw the train with your camera. The idea is that you should turn and follow the train with the camera, rather than keeping the camera still, provided the camera is kept at the same speed and direction in relation to the train, you get the train fairly sharp, whilst the background becomes a motion blur. In the situation I took those in, the camera was telling me that the light was bad and it didn't think I would get a shot due to the slow shutter speed, this was a bonus in this case as that train was maybe only moving at about 15mph! If it had been a bright sunny day then it would have likely "stopped" the background as well as the train. Dependant on what you are photographing and in what conditions then you may have to fiddle with shutter speed etc to get a blur effect, but if you are shooting stuff that's moving fast, say 100mph+ trains on the NEC, then even on a sunny day this technique will probably work without changing auto settings. My suggestion if you want to try it, is find a location with lots of trains, and you can use a few to do some dummy runs, pre-judging the focus and zoom I find to be useful, so if you can get the camera set up over the course of a couple of trains before getting the shot you want. The bonus with the digital is of course you can see if you are getting it right after each attempt, and judge how you've done, with the 35mm it's very much a case of "take a bunch, some of them will work". (Unless you're a genius photographer unlike me! ) This was one I did a few years ago with the 35mm camera, a bonus with working with MU stock is that you can try and shoot the back of the train too, as is the case here! Train speed in this case was probably around 60mph, and it was a fairly nice sunny day, I got around 3 good shots back from about 10 I tried this technique on that day, I was happy with that.
