Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I used to shoot panning shots of fast bird in super fast shutter speed resulting in clear background with hardly any sense of motion.

Here is my attempt at 1/250s with my Pentax MF 300mmF4








I hope I can do some sport car scene later




Daniel

Yes please.... would love to see something other than birds for a change.

Not sure if this was meant to be an invitation for panning shots or to show case your own... but since someone mentioned motorsports...

1/20, 200mm

I can never get a hang of panning shots. I usually go too fast or too slow. Is there a trick to it?

Usually, when I do panning, I'm using a 70-200 F4 at 200.

or some wide angle panning?

1/8 @ 10mm
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ste823/3780221618/" title="Andy's AE86, Collin's FC3S by StE823, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3466/3780221618_590677e7fc.jpg" width="333" height="500" alt="Andy's AE86, Collin's FC3S"></a>

im still trying since its kinda blurry... should have use a faster shutter speed..

Lol. That looks like a panda Trueno from Initial D. Is it a 1986? =P

1985 don't forget the FC too...

One thing about using WA lens for panning is that focus is a lot easier provided you pan according to the speed of the subject

i dont get it

The 86 nickname of the infamous Panda Trueno has nothing to do with model year. It's from the AE86 chassis code of that particular version of the Trueno and Levin (Corolla over here).

Using WA gives you a lot more DoF. But for slow panning shots you can still keep the the sense of motion as the blurred background has nothing to do with DoF.
With wider lens all you need (tough though) is to pan according to subject speed. And you have less worry about subject not in focus. For me (MF shooter) and even AF shooter, focusing is an issue part for panning


Daniel

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/burlapjacket/92082531/" title="C4 Red Rock wide by Burlap Jacket, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/41/92082531_18d5c2bb8e.jpg" width="500" height="251" alt="C4 Red Rock wide"></a>

Enough of the car pans, you see them in every car brochure and ad, let's see some birds!

I'm sure that birds are a lot tougher to follow for panning as they are not on a straight line road where their direction of motion is predictable.

Two wheels (through fence) then?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ofermod/3717883992/" title="Honda Motorcycle demo by ofermod, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3263/3717883992_ef00de1ebc.jpg" width="500" height="334" alt="Honda Motorcycle demo"></a>

enough of birds and cars, let's see some people pan shots

Another healthy lifestyle

<img src="http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/m/o/moontemple/_MG_1944.jpg" alt='84.96 &#1050;&#1041;'>

haha that made me chuckle

how about a prancing horse

bird pans. car pans, people pans....hows about some fry pans??

I beg to differ.

WA panning is extremely difficult, esp the subj is moving fast (over 160 km/h).

Even at a meager 24mm, it's way more difficult than doing it at 135mm. Think of how much you have to swing the lens and the shutter speed you need to use in a 24mm vs a longer focal length and you'll understand why.

The point that I want to make is that WA panning is still easier than long lens (like 300mm) panning as DoF is smaller assuming same subject motion


Daniel

Lens swinging for WA panning is smaller . The longer the lens the bigger the swing

Not really.

If you're closer to the subject in question, you'll need a wider angle lens if you want to capture the subject and fill up the frame as much as you can. You will pan quicker if you want to achieve the same amount of blur.

If you have a zoom lens, you'll need to stand back farther to get the same framing of course. And thus the amount of panning you need to do to achieve the same amount of blur when using a wide angle lens will be significantly less and the speed at which you pan will also be much less.

Guaranteed that the number of keepers you'll get when using the zoom lens will be much higher than the wide angle lens. It's like a golf swing, you can swing fast and go for distance and sacrifice accuracy, or slow the swing down for accuracy.

Very common technique with motorsport photography and why you don't see a lot of guys right up to the road where possible for panning shots.

Anyways, here's one of my favourites from a few years ago.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanm/1224923721/" title="2007 Grand Prix of Mosport - Speed World Challenge Touring (Friday sessions) (by Tanner.)"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1146/1224923721_186e6045c5.jpg" title="2007 Grand Prix of Mosport - Speed World Challenge Touring (Friday sessions) (by Tanner.)" alt="2007 Grand Prix of Mosport - Speed World Challenge Touring (Friday sessions) (by Tanner.)" width="500" height="340"></a>

Never been particularly good at panning. Just not steady handed enough for the lower shutter speeds, so I try to make up for it in other ways.

Shot this a while ago back in the film shooting days...

Not only need to swing more with a wa lens, the subject can be distort easier compare to zoom lens while you are panning with a wa (ie. having the headlight sharp and blurry rear end)

I think people believe swinging more with a zoom lens because people are bursting while panning

Quality pan shots.



Oops I forgot when you swing you need to keep the subject in the centre of frame anyway to get sharp image (at slow shutter speed)

WA has at least deeper DoF.

I do discount the fact that you may need to zoom in or out. I also discount corner performance of WA lens

I explain earlier I do panning shots for fast subject . This is the first try with slower shutter speed. My regular panning shots are generally with little motion at all at over 1/1500s shutter speed.


http://forums.steves-digicams.com/wildl ... ction.html

These two are consecutive panning shots at high shutter . I did not even have chance to position the subject in the centre at all as it came and left real fast

Okay I noticed your response has changed but anyways, I'll keep my response as the following:



No argument on that one. The one thing that we should be asking is what are you trying to achieve with the panning shots. Fast shutter to freeze everything or a slow shutter to get a sense of motion/speed to your photos?

If you want to add a sense of speed to your photos, you're going to need a lot less shutter speed. For example, the below was at 1/100th and at 200mm.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanm/1676483866/" title="20071021-081914 (by Tanner.)"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2190/1676483866_ba370b0440.jpg" title="20071021-081914 (by Tanner.)" alt="20071021-081914 (by Tanner.)" width="500" height="340"></a>

Some guys can easily do 1/60th consistently and get awesome motion blur. Unfortunately I'm not one of those guys.

So if I use the above photo as an example, and apply it to this Word/Photoshop chicken scratch'ed drawing...



If I try and take the same photo above and achieve the same amount of blur, but this time with a wide angle lens this time, I'll need to be much closer of course. And I'll also need to use the same shutter speed to get a the same amount of blur. What is different as shown in the above drawing, is the amount of panning required. More distance in the panning is required and also faster the panning. And like golfing, the faster the swing (and sometimes more chaotic!), the less accuracy you'll have. And the less accuracy you have, the less number of high quality shots you'll have.

So stand back further with a telephoto lens, to cover that same distance in the pan is much less and the pan is much slower and smoother, resulting in a higher number of photos that turn out great.

DOF for these type of motion shots really isn't an issue... everything in the foreground and background will be blurred anyways, but I do agree that if you want to get everything relatively sharp a much bigger DOF is required which a wide angle lens is better suited if you're using a very fast shutter speed.

I'd try and find some of my other photos where I used a much slower shutter speed but flickr is starting to aggravate me with it's slow response.

Whatever floats your boat

As much as i love panning racecars and the like, nothing beats a Steam Locomotive for panning, all the rods and motion below the running board really gets you some great motion blur if done right.