Howto: Panning
Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 11:29 pmA pan shot results in an image where the subject is sharp but the background is blurred as the photographer trains the lens on a subject as it moves past. The subject is stationary or nearly stationary relative to the photographer, but the background moves and hence the blur.
Elements of the subject may be blurred, for example wheels on a car, legs on a person but most of the subject is sharp.
Pan shots are useful to convey a sense of movement. They can also be used to capture fast-moving subjects in poor lighting conditions as the shutter speed required is necessarily relatively slow.
There are many variations of pan shots. You don't need a very fast moving subject, or a long lens. But to begin with we'll explain the basic pan shot for a vehicle where it is moving quickly and in a straight line.
Everything below can be varied and there are other ways of focusing for example, but if you want somewhere to begin use these settings.
What you need
1. Somewhere where the car can travel in a straight line at a constant speed, and you can see it well before it passes in front of you.
2. Background. It will be blurred so minor details will be lost but you don't want anything too obvious like a promiment roadsign as a distraction. Some background behind the car, for example trees is good otherwise there will be less sense of movement.
Taking the shot
A. Set your shutter speed to 1/80 sec. ISO to 100 or 200. The fastest burst mode your camera can manage.
B. Have the driver stop the car directly in front of you. Adjust the zoom so the car has about 2/3 of its length before and after it in the frame. Then note the zoom and leave it at that.
1. To begin with stand about 50m away from the road. Have the driver drive about 1km down the road, turn around (somewhere safe) and then accelerate to 80kmph well before they pass in front of you. This gives both you and the driver time to settle in. You can leave the last-minute pan shots till later.
Warn the driver photoshoots are boring, not glamourous. A pair of UHF radios is very useful
2. Select centre focus and pre-focus on the road immediately in front of you, and hold the focus (depress shutter halfway).
3. Swing the camera back to the direction of where the car is coming from. You should pick up the car at around a 45 degree angle of travel to where it will pass directly in front of you.
4. It's like a golfer's swing, or a pool shot. Smooth, gentle, follow-through. Find the car in the viewfinder and track it. Do not adjust zoom or shutter. Keep the car centred.
5. As the car comes through about 30 degrees hit the burst mode and gently follow through beyond the point at which the car is directly in front of you. You should still be taking frames as the car passes in front.
That's it! You should now have several frames, of which one or two will be usuable. Expect to throw the rest away.
Further experiments:
- try shutter speeds of 1/60 and 1/125
- move closer in and use say a 30mm zoom. Use a shutter speed of 1/30
- move further out and use a 100mm lens and 1/100th
This is not an ideal background as it is too far away. Nevertheless, the car is sharp. A dirt road also throws up a little dust which adds to the sense of movement.
You don't need a clear view of a vehicle for a decent shot. The trees make an interesting frame in this one. But there is no way you'd get that precise a shot without a good frame rate.
A straightforward pan shot.
Car position in the frame
Any moving-subject photograph tends to work best if there is space behind the subject and slightly more in front. It is very difficult to measure this as a car flies by, so erring on the side of caution by zooming out is best. Then you can crop to best effect, and it also makes the pan easier. In the days of 8Mp+ cameras the final image is still large and usuable.
Focus
There are many focus techniques for panning. The simplest is described above, which is pre-focus on where the car will pass by in front of you, and pan with it. Pre-focusing means pointing the camera at the point you want to photograph to be taken, pressing the shutter halfway and keeping it there.
You could also manually focus and that would remove the need to keep your finger halfway on the shutter button. But then you have to switch the lens between auto and manual focus and if you are covering a motorsport event that could be valuable time.
It is also not strictly necessary to pre-focus. DSLRs are quick enough to focus and shoot. However, P&S users will certainly need to pre-focus as their focusing systems are far slower, as is the frame rate.
Which focus point to use? Centre will work, as will whichever one is on the side of the frame in the direction of travel.
AF-C and Ai-Servo modes. These can work too but the problem is that they are designed for subject moving relative to you at a constant speed. They shift the focus to pre-empt where the subject will be.
A car passing you at right angles is not approaching at a constant speed. THerefore, they can be fooled and produce worse results than using normal burst mode.
Shutter Speed
There is no single answer. It depends on what effect you are trying to achieve. Here are the tradeoffs:
- slower shutter speed is more blur, but harder to handhold
- a longer lens will require a quicker shutter speed
- the slower the vehicle, the longer the shutter speed for blur
If the intention is to demonstrate some sense of movement then you generally do not need very slow shutter speeds such as 1/30.
In this shot the vehicle is travelling at less than 20kmph. The shutter speed is 1/50 and the focal length is 38mm. The pan had to be diagonal as the vehicle was ascending a hill.
A slower shutter speed could have been used but that would have blurred the background too much for my liking. I wanted a sense of a forest, not a complete green mess. A slower speed would have made the shot even more difficult. Imagine this shot with say 1/500th. The vehicle would appear to be staionary.
Standing far away was not an option. Too much forest in the way. So the shot had to be a close-range pan. This frame was taken on the third and final run.
The only problem with this shot is the stray bit of grass over the rear wheel. However, that could be edited out if required.
Panning isn't just for vehicle shots either. It is a useful technique with all sorts of moving subjects, including Santas on flying foxes.
Lens length
The further away you are from the subject:
- the fast the subject needs to move to achieve blur
- the longer the lens required, and that means a shorter shutter speed to avoid camera shake
- if the subject is a long one (a vehicle as opposed to a person) then more of it will be in focus. A short-range pan shot will not have all the vehicle in focus. This is sometimes desirable. Contrast these two shots:
The white Landrover was shot using a 75-300 at around 90m away. Almost all the vehicle is in focus. The blue Nissan was shot from around 15m away, and while the shot is not entirely sharp the difference in sharpness between the front and rear of the vehicle is apparent. This is due to the short lens used, a 24-70.
This shot is fine apart from the lack of positioning in the frame. Err on the side of caution, you can always crop to suit but you can't add extra background in as easily.
This is a better shot:
Panning and Curves
Panning is easier if the subject is moving on the radius of a circle with the photographer at the centre. This is because the distance from the photographer to the subject is fixed. Conversely, if you are standing on the outside of a bend them panning becomes more difficult, but not impossible.
Elements of the subject may be blurred, for example wheels on a car, legs on a person but most of the subject is sharp.
Pan shots are useful to convey a sense of movement. They can also be used to capture fast-moving subjects in poor lighting conditions as the shutter speed required is necessarily relatively slow.
There are many variations of pan shots. You don't need a very fast moving subject, or a long lens. But to begin with we'll explain the basic pan shot for a vehicle where it is moving quickly and in a straight line.
Everything below can be varied and there are other ways of focusing for example, but if you want somewhere to begin use these settings.
What you need
1. Somewhere where the car can travel in a straight line at a constant speed, and you can see it well before it passes in front of you.
2. Background. It will be blurred so minor details will be lost but you don't want anything too obvious like a promiment roadsign as a distraction. Some background behind the car, for example trees is good otherwise there will be less sense of movement.
Taking the shot
A. Set your shutter speed to 1/80 sec. ISO to 100 or 200. The fastest burst mode your camera can manage.
B. Have the driver stop the car directly in front of you. Adjust the zoom so the car has about 2/3 of its length before and after it in the frame. Then note the zoom and leave it at that.
1. To begin with stand about 50m away from the road. Have the driver drive about 1km down the road, turn around (somewhere safe) and then accelerate to 80kmph well before they pass in front of you. This gives both you and the driver time to settle in. You can leave the last-minute pan shots till later.
Warn the driver photoshoots are boring, not glamourous. A pair of UHF radios is very useful
2. Select centre focus and pre-focus on the road immediately in front of you, and hold the focus (depress shutter halfway).
3. Swing the camera back to the direction of where the car is coming from. You should pick up the car at around a 45 degree angle of travel to where it will pass directly in front of you.
4. It's like a golfer's swing, or a pool shot. Smooth, gentle, follow-through. Find the car in the viewfinder and track it. Do not adjust zoom or shutter. Keep the car centred.
5. As the car comes through about 30 degrees hit the burst mode and gently follow through beyond the point at which the car is directly in front of you. You should still be taking frames as the car passes in front.
That's it! You should now have several frames, of which one or two will be usuable. Expect to throw the rest away.
Further experiments:
- try shutter speeds of 1/60 and 1/125
- move closer in and use say a 30mm zoom. Use a shutter speed of 1/30
- move further out and use a 100mm lens and 1/100th
This is not an ideal background as it is too far away. Nevertheless, the car is sharp. A dirt road also throws up a little dust which adds to the sense of movement.
You don't need a clear view of a vehicle for a decent shot. The trees make an interesting frame in this one. But there is no way you'd get that precise a shot without a good frame rate.
A straightforward pan shot.
Car position in the frame
Any moving-subject photograph tends to work best if there is space behind the subject and slightly more in front. It is very difficult to measure this as a car flies by, so erring on the side of caution by zooming out is best. Then you can crop to best effect, and it also makes the pan easier. In the days of 8Mp+ cameras the final image is still large and usuable.
Focus
There are many focus techniques for panning. The simplest is described above, which is pre-focus on where the car will pass by in front of you, and pan with it. Pre-focusing means pointing the camera at the point you want to photograph to be taken, pressing the shutter halfway and keeping it there.
You could also manually focus and that would remove the need to keep your finger halfway on the shutter button. But then you have to switch the lens between auto and manual focus and if you are covering a motorsport event that could be valuable time.
It is also not strictly necessary to pre-focus. DSLRs are quick enough to focus and shoot. However, P&S users will certainly need to pre-focus as their focusing systems are far slower, as is the frame rate.
Which focus point to use? Centre will work, as will whichever one is on the side of the frame in the direction of travel.
AF-C and Ai-Servo modes. These can work too but the problem is that they are designed for subject moving relative to you at a constant speed. They shift the focus to pre-empt where the subject will be.
A car passing you at right angles is not approaching at a constant speed. THerefore, they can be fooled and produce worse results than using normal burst mode.
Shutter Speed
There is no single answer. It depends on what effect you are trying to achieve. Here are the tradeoffs:
- slower shutter speed is more blur, but harder to handhold
- a longer lens will require a quicker shutter speed
- the slower the vehicle, the longer the shutter speed for blur
If the intention is to demonstrate some sense of movement then you generally do not need very slow shutter speeds such as 1/30.
In this shot the vehicle is travelling at less than 20kmph. The shutter speed is 1/50 and the focal length is 38mm. The pan had to be diagonal as the vehicle was ascending a hill.
A slower shutter speed could have been used but that would have blurred the background too much for my liking. I wanted a sense of a forest, not a complete green mess. A slower speed would have made the shot even more difficult. Imagine this shot with say 1/500th. The vehicle would appear to be staionary.
Standing far away was not an option. Too much forest in the way. So the shot had to be a close-range pan. This frame was taken on the third and final run.
The only problem with this shot is the stray bit of grass over the rear wheel. However, that could be edited out if required.
Panning isn't just for vehicle shots either. It is a useful technique with all sorts of moving subjects, including Santas on flying foxes.
Lens length
The further away you are from the subject:
- the fast the subject needs to move to achieve blur
- the longer the lens required, and that means a shorter shutter speed to avoid camera shake
- if the subject is a long one (a vehicle as opposed to a person) then more of it will be in focus. A short-range pan shot will not have all the vehicle in focus. This is sometimes desirable. Contrast these two shots:
The white Landrover was shot using a 75-300 at around 90m away. Almost all the vehicle is in focus. The blue Nissan was shot from around 15m away, and while the shot is not entirely sharp the difference in sharpness between the front and rear of the vehicle is apparent. This is due to the short lens used, a 24-70.
This shot is fine apart from the lack of positioning in the frame. Err on the side of caution, you can always crop to suit but you can't add extra background in as easily.
This is a better shot:
Panning and Curves
Panning is easier if the subject is moving on the radius of a circle with the photographer at the centre. This is because the distance from the photographer to the subject is fixed. Conversely, if you are standing on the outside of a bend them panning becomes more difficult, but not impossible.
