Extreme DOF @fter Pan

Extreme DOF @fter pan, originally uploaded by imageo.

For some time I have realised that using anti-shake and auto focus while panning after birds in flight was counter productive. Most often I missed the great shot as the lens drives back and forth trying to focus or worse it would find something well in the background, behind the action and I have a blurred bird.  So I’ve been brave and stopped down a bit (eg f8 of higher, to get a bit of latitude in depth of field, DOF) and manual focussed in the middle distance where I expected the bird to fly. Then I set the camera into multi-shoot and follow the birds flight in a conventional smooth pan with my finger held down. Depending on the light I usually get a better sequence with just a little motion blur in the background (see below). However the photo above is the last shot in the sequence just as the sea gull is flying out of my depth field range and the distant background, well up the beach, is out of focus. Giving it a pleasingly ambiguous “into the unknown feel”

anti-shake

I was out, without my tripod at night (which normally means blurred images), and thought I should give the “Shake Reduction” mechanism on my new pentax camera testing. These are both hand held, and at a around of a third of a second in low light I think the "anti-shake magic" does a good job (these are not specific before shots here, but a probably have a few hundred of those unuseableir is nothing blurred ones that are not worth looking at). The stabilization is done at the CCD and image recording level so there is nothing obviously different through the view finder, when you take the photo.

Available light

I was just trying out the anti-shake feature of my new Pentax K100D in low light. Basically I think it works well.

Merry Christmas