Yesterday, Dublin’s LUAS Red Line made news when a horse went for a spin. Sorry, I don’t have a photo of that escapade.
I did make a few photos of tram 3001 that was traversing Dublin streets in the latest advertising livery.
The evening started off bright, but gradually clouds rolled in from the west and rain followed.
Which weather conditions do you think made for the most interesting images?
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Vexing Tram Pauses at Crossing.
Since arriving back in Dublin, I’ve had good luck catching one of the two advertsting trams wandering the Red Line. Without much effort on my part, the ‘Join Me’ painted tram, has appeared at all the right moments, and I’d made several representative views of it—as featured in earlier Tracking the Light posts.
By contrast, I’ve found more colourful ‘HB ice cream’ tram, has been elusive and difficult to photograph. This seems to zip by whenever my back is turned, or when I’m walking with a mission in the opposite direction.
My fortunes changed on July 31, 2014, when the HB tram glided down Benburb Street and stopped in front of me for about four minutes while waiting to reach its Heuston stop (which, lucky for me, was occupied by the car in front of it).
This was just enough time to make a variety of images from different angles. Which is exactly what I’d been hoping to do, since every section of the tram is painted differently. It’s arguably the most colorful LUAS vehicle to prowl the system to date.
All these views were made with my Lumix LX7, a camera I tend to carry with me everywhere I go.
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Practice panning. I’ve found this increases the ratio of success. Trams are good subjects for practicing. They come by a frequently and at regular intervals. They operate in urban environments with interesting backgrounds. If one set of pans isn’t satisfactory, no problem, there’ll be another tram along shortly. Also, trams tend to be double-ended, allowing opportunities for panning coming and going.
Dublin is blessed with a modern tram system. The LUAS is well suited (and aptly named— translated from the Irish roughly means ‘speed’) for panning. LUAS Citadis trams built are by Alstom, and are a standard European model. I find these reasonably photogenic, so far as trams go and they glide along smoothly. Over the years I’ve made a variety of LUAS pans. I exposed this pair of tram pans yesterday afternoon (February 18, 2013) along Dublin’s Benburb Street using my Canon 7D fitted with 40mm Pancake lens (which as result of the 7D’s smaller sensor size provides a 35mm film camera equivalent of about 60mm lens)
Here’s a few tips for making clean pan photos:
1) Use a 50mm lens or short telephoto. (Making pan photos with wide-angles and long telephotos is much more difficult)
2) Manually select a shutter speed between 1/15th and 1/60th of a second. (the longer the shutter is open, the greater the effect of blurring, but the harder it is to obtain a clean pan).
3) Make a series of experimental photos to practice the panning motion.
4) Pan by pivoting the entire body.
5) Pick a point in the frame to line up with the subject; try to hold the subject to that point during the entire pan.
6) Begin panning well before the subject is photographed and plan to continue panning until well after the shutter is released. Don’t stop suddenly.
7) If using an SLR/DSLR, plan on making a single frame and not a series of motor drive exposures. (The mirror flapping up and down is distracting and may simply result in a series of badly blurred images instead of a single sharp one).
8) Pay careful attention to the background and how it relates to your subject.
9) Repeat steps 1 to 8 as often as is practicable.
I’ll divulge a few more panning tricks in a later post.
