First Time Panning....Help :)

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Matt84

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Matt
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Hi, this is my first post after posting a 'Welcome' post this morning. I took a drive out to a nearby road for a half hour or so to practice panning. I am 100% beginner and this is my first time trying it.

None of these photo's are anywhere near perfect:'( but I want to post them up to get tips/advice etc.

When I got there I set my camera to 'Shutter' mode, AF-C mode and Single point AF. I drifted between ISO 100-400 and from 1/100 down to 1/60.

On the shot's you can see that some parts are in focus and other's are not, e.g. middle of the car is in focus and the number plates are not. Now as an amateur I am thinking that this is because the aperture was too small e.g f22 and should have been larger e.g f8?? And also to do with my panning technique?

Anyway, I will post these attempts and if you have the time you could maybe throw a few tips in:clap:

If not then I will continue to do this:bang: lol

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77886127@N04/
 
Hello Matt. Aperture makes a difference too. If the car is parallel to you its less important, but if the car is at an oblique angle, then a smaller aperture helps. I try to point my feet in the direction the car is travelling, then swivel to pick up the car and then try to smoothly pan as it passes. Its a bit hit and miss until you nail it.
 
Photodiva said:
Hello Matt. Aperture makes a difference too. If the car is parallel to you its less important, but if the car is at an oblique angle, then a smaller aperture helps. I try to point my feet in the direction the car is travelling, then swivel to pick up the car and then try to smoothly pan as it passes. Its a bit hit and miss until you nail it.
Click to expand...


Hey thanks for the reply, sorry it took me so long to reply ( have a week off and the wife has me doing enough chores to last a lifetime :rules:

Yeah been reading in the forum's about how to place your feet when panning etc, I think I maybe had the wrong ISO and thus the wrong aperture.

I am going to a local car rally on Friday, I'm thinking maybe not to concentrate on panning too much because I will lose out on other types of shot's. I have picked a place where I will stand, it's on a very long straight with a few bumps in the road, so I'm thinking if I can get the car side on or head on while it's off the ground for a few seconds? But I want to freeze the car but have motion in the wheels, to do this should I still keep a lower shutter speed, maybe 1/125 or should I keep it around 1/800? Is there any particular way of shooting for that type of shot? I dpn't mind if both the car and background are in focus as long as I can get movement in the tyres.

I will try a few pan's while I am there, I will be quite close to the car passing, so any tips are welcome :thumbs:
 
Freezing motion, but blurred wheels comes down to ss - experiment. 1/125 probably a good starting point. Depends on the speed of the car and distance and angle from you. Completely 'frozen' car shots are a bit boring. Of course, Photoshop is your friend if you can't get it right LOL. Low angles work but think about your safety first and foremost. Post some results.
 
If you are panning, generally you are rotating the camera around a fixed point (your head).

If the subject is fairly long and fairly close like the cars in your pictures, as you rotate some parts of car will be moving at different speeds relative to your position. If you get it right, it's only really the bit of the car that you are keeping precise tracking on (e.g. the number plate) that will appear sharp. Bits of the car that are further away e.g. the boot, are not moving in the same way relative to your camera as the number plate, so will appear to be passing through the frame so will have motion blur on them.

So, a subject which is tall but thin will yield a better result than a subject which is long. This effect increases the longer your shutter speed is.

The key to good panning therefore is to firstly set your shutter speed to be right for the subject, and secondly to track the subject smoothly and accurately.

If you just want the wheels of the car blurred, try lots of different shutter speeds until you get a bit of blur in them, and that's all that you should be after. It's a balance between getting that motion blur in the wheels and keeping the length of the car sharp as you rotate through the pan.

Tracking the subject smoothly is simply a decent amount of practice. It helps to use one focus point and keep that on the correct bit of the subject. As with a tennis stroke, get a smooth motion going to follow the car as it comes towards you so you are already tracking it well as it comes to the place you want to take the picture. Then smoothly squeeze the shutter, and follow through with the pan as the car goes out of shot.

Also, take lots of pictures. Use your AI Servo or whatever to get as many frames per second as you can and machine gun the subject. You'll give yourself more chance of getting one or two shots nice and sharp that way, and you've already bought your megabytes so they are all free now - you might as well use them.

If you
 
Tobers said:
If you are panning, generally you are rotating the camera around a fixed point (your head).

If the subject is fairly long and fairly close like the cars in your pictures, as you rotate some parts of car will be moving at different speeds relative to your position. If you get it right, it's only really the bit of the car that you are keeping precise tracking on (e.g. the number plate) that will appear sharp. Bits of the car that are further away e.g. the boot, are not moving in the same way relative to your camera as the number plate, so will appear to be passing through the frame so will have motion blur on them.

So, a subject which is tall but thin will yield a better result than a subject which is long. This effect increases the longer your shutter speed is.

The key to good panning therefore is to firstly set your shutter speed to be right for the subject, and secondly to track the subject smoothly and accurately.

If you just want the wheels of the car blurred, try lots of different shutter speeds until you get a bit of blur in them, and that's all that you should be after. It's a balance between getting that motion blur in the wheels and keeping the length of the car sharp as you rotate through the pan.

Tracking the subject smoothly is simply a decent amount of practice. It helps to use one focus point and keep that on the correct bit of the subject. As with a tennis stroke, get a smooth motion going to follow the car as it comes towards you so you are already tracking it well as it comes to the place you want to take the picture. Then smoothly squeeze the shutter, and follow through with the pan as the car goes out of shot.

Also, take lots of pictures. Use your AI Servo or whatever to get as many frames per second as you can and machine gun the subject. You'll give yourself more chance of getting one or two shots nice and sharp that way, and you've already bought your megabytes so they are all free now - you might as well use them.

If you
Click to expand...


Hi, thanks for the reply, only getting back online today, been a busy start to the week. The rally didn't go as well as I had hoped, most of the pics were blurred and just not good. I think I stood at the wrong spot, it was a double hairpin but it was a downhill hairpin and so most of the time the car would be 3/4 towards me which is useless for panning, guess I should have went to the long straight and panned from there:bonk:

Another thing I noticed, when I set the shutter speed to say 1/60, 1/50 the aperture went to f16, f22 etc, how can I get it to stay at approx f5-f8 while keeping the 1/60 1/50 shutter speed? I was getting the background blur but not all the car was in focus, so I guess I need to open the aperture a bit. I am new to this so any tips on this would be great, is it an ISO problem?

I took a few pans today while my son was playing on the swings,I uploaded them, if you can please click the link and see what you think, its just the first 3 pics, the silver van and 2 black cars

Thanks again folks for your help :thumbs:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/77886127@N04/
 
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