bike

Today I decided to sit on the wall outside my house and let the blips come to me. The plan was to shoot motor bikes as they ride past, as there are some weird and wonderful sites on bikes. Plan A was to shoot freeze shots from a more ?head-on? angle, with the fastest shutter speed to freeze the action, the smallest aperture for depth of field and manual pre-focus on a chosen spot on the road. The object was to capture the character of the people, rather than the motion of the bike.

The sky was patchy clouds, so the sun was in and out all the time. While the sun was out, the speed and aperture was working out great, I had the camera set to aperture priority F11, which is the smallest aperture for my camera. But when the sun was hidden by clouds, the shutter speeds were getting a bit on the low side for a crisp shot. I decided that now would be a good time to have a play with the ISO setting, something I have not touched on this camera before. I set the ISO to 320, up from 80. The two stop improvement in shutter speeds solved my problems and things were looking good.

I processed the first batch of pictures, about a dozen of each ISO setting. To my dismay, the ISO 320 pictures were grainy, just like when using the old 400ASA film. To be honest, I was not expecting this grain effect. I abandoned the ISO 320 and went back to the lowest setting of ISO 80.

After too many to mention head on shots and not really getting what I wanted, the clouds took over and shutter speed was compromised, so I decided to move on to plan B, panning shots. The subject is now switched from the character of the rider to the movement of the bike, with streaky backgrounds for the illusion of speed and hopefully, reasonably crisp subjects.

Panning moving objects was interesting, but too hit and miss. I lost many interesting shots through a blurry mess, like the five-up teenagers on a bike, all waving frantically to get on the pic, the gas delivery boy carrying about twenty bottles of gas on his bike, the floral guy delivering a wooden framed display the size of a barn door. Where were these people when I was doing the head on shots. I guess panning will take some more practice but I was pleased with the posted shot though. I will be coming back to this subject in the future for sure.

Bikes are a huge part of Indonesian life. Very few people can afford a car and the roads are all jammed up anyway. So it seems like half the population of Bandung owns a bike. Whole families flying past is not unusual, Dad driving, junior standing in front, Mom side saddle on the back carrying a baby. Yes it is scary and very wrong, but what are people supposed to do when a modest taxi ride costs a whole days wages. Now I have to look for the calamine lotion for my head, as it is looking a bit like a ripe tomato at the moment, It might make a good blip for tomorrow, but the color balance might damage my camera.

Technology

There was a reason why fast film emulsions were grainy, it was to do with the chemical process, but I can think of no reason why a digital picture would be grainy. Then I started to wonder if the techy engineers had deliberately introduced the grain effect with the ISO setting, just to emulate the fast film emulsions, if so, what a bunch of idiots. Did they think that grainy pictures was a desirable feature. If we want a grain effect, we can use a PS filter.

While I am here discussing the techy boffins, why do the cameras still operate with mechanical speed control, when it would be much simpler, more accurate and a lot cheaper, to control the exposure speed by electronically switching the chip on and off, which incidentally, they have to do anyway. With the speeds of today?s chips, I see no reason why speeds of upto 1/20,000 sec, with huge ISO numbers is not possible, with the quality of 25ASA film. Once you get rid of the mechanical shutter, you can then operate with flash at any speed setting.

Why not have an optional adjustable gain sound trigger built in, to occasionally replace the manual shutter release button. This would open up a whole new range of possibilities, from whispering ?beep? to shoot the picture, tripod shots without the need for a cable release, night time wildlife pictures triggered by mere rustling or even a plug in infra red trigger, the bursting balloon or exploding light bulb type shots in daylight. I feel that camera technology is being held back by photographers wanting digital cameras that operate the same way the ?old? cameras did. With electronics, the only limitation to camera design is our imaginations. The digital age is now established, it is time to move forward.

Dave