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CrazyBusy
Oct. 19, 2008
Panning- A Fun Photography Assignment For You!
Note: I wanted to wait & post this when I had some time to get more "example" pictures... but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. I may add more later, but for now, I hope this will do! Please participate if/when you have time! :) Thanks!
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Now here's a really fun photography technique to try. It's called panning. And for once, it's okay if your picture turns out blurry. In fact, it's supposed to! Read on to learn a bit about this technique and then play along. I want to see your panning photos!
Panning is all about NOT holding your camera still. Nor do you expect your subject to remain still- in fact, you want them both moving! The point of panning is to create motion blur of the background, while keeping your subject in focus as well as you can. You will be tracking your subject's movement by following them with your camera.
Choose Your Subject
Here are some activities that would make for some great panning photos: any type of fast, active sport would work (football, soccer, basketball), horse or car racing, swinging, jumping, running, bicycling, skating, dancing, cars driving by... anything where there is fast movement.
Got a subject in mind? Good.
Get Your Camera Ready- Slow Down That Shutter Speed!
You will need to use a slow shutter speed. Yep, a SLOW shutter speed for once. I like to start with 1/30 of a second and adjust from there. For those of you with DSLR's, put your camera in TV mode. (or for more advanced users, just use manual- and I doubt you'll need any further explanations if you use manual regularly) TV mode is shutter priority mode- you're telling your camera what shutter speed to use and letting it figure out the rest of the settings needed for a proper exposure. Put in 1/30 of a second. Also, put your camera's drive mode on continuous shooting so you can get more frames per second (and a better shot at getting a photo you like!).
**For point & shoot users, trying shooting in "night" mode and MAKE SURE YOU CANCEL YOUR FLASH- this goes for DSLR users too. If your flash goes off, it will freeze the action and therefore cancel out the effect we're going for here. You CAN do it with a flash, but for this assignment, we're going to turn it off.
Get Into Position
Now, position yourself so that as the action passes you by, you and your camera are parallel (and stay parallel) to your subject and their movement.
3...2...1... ACTION!
So your subject's ready, you're in position, you've got your camera set and ready to go.... Now have your subject zoom by you, doing whatever activity it is that you chose (unless you chose a sports game- then you'll just have to wait for that moment). You're going to focus on your subject while holding down your shutter release button and moving your camera at the (hopefully) exact same speed as your subject. I'd suggest using your central focal point and using that to gauge and track your subject's speed. For example, if you focus on your subject's face, you want to keep your subject's face under the radar of that focal point as they run by.
Focusing can be tricky so you'll have to play around a little to see what suits you best. You have to have a pretty fast camera/lens to focus as they pass you by. You can try pre-focusing & locking it till they go by too. You do this by pressing your shutter release halfway down and holding it there until you're ready to shoot. You'd have to prefocus on an object that will be in the same plane as your subject.
And let me tell you, you are going to be taking LOTS and LOTS of photos to get one or two you're happy with. Do not try this with a film camera. ($$$)
Check Your Results
Try not to wear your subject out too much. Check your LCD after the first shot and see how it looks. You don't want to do 20 takes of your child running past you to find that they are just a big blurry blob in all 200 frames and make them do it over. You do want to be able to tell what it was you were taking a picture of. If your photo is TOO blurry, more than likely it's a focusing issue. You'll either have to try focusing better (focusing on them & tracking them at a speed similar to their speed) or you may need to adjust your shutter speed to something faster (bottom number higher than 30).
If there is not enough blur, slow your shutter speed down (bottom number gets lower) little by little and watch your results.
And just remember- if you do need to have your child speed past you on their bike 4,596 times, you can always just call it Phys. Ed. and give them credit for it. See? It all works out in the end. ;)
Have fun!
Here are some of my results. Miss Julianna was my very willing subject one day.
This one is a bit TOO blurry. Her face is trailing to her left. My shutter speed was 1/6 of a second. That is slow but it's mostly a focusing issue on my part since her face is more in focus in the next example, and I was using the same shutter speed on that one.
Out of all the shots I took at this distance, this one turned out the best. Her face isn't perfectly focused (it doesn't need to be), but it's the obvious focal point of the picture.
Here I zoomed out a bit. NOT ENOUGH MOTION BLUR, despite using 1/20 of a second:
TOO MUCH BLUR- dropped my shutter speed to 1/15:
And this one was my favorite of this series. Her face is the obvious focal point and there is plenty of motion blur. 1/15 on this one. (by the way, I didn't do ANY editing on these besides to resize/sharpen for web. Normally I wouldn't go with such a centered crop, but for this assignment, it's easiest to use your center focal point to track the action)
Now, here's one I like, but there's one problem. Millie's in pretty good focus. There's obvious motion blur as you can see by the black blob of a dog behind her who was presently kenneled and in a doggy time-out for fighting over a bone. However, the background was not a good choice. It's busy, cluttered and distracting. So take note- choose your spot wisely. A cluttered, busy background may ruin your shot!
And I finally got smart & added the EXIF info to the picture itself so I wouldn't have to keep looking it up each time!
Too blurry (as if I had to point that out). An example of a bad try. He has 2 eyes, not 4. (I didn't get any I liked of Josiah):
I tried some with Millie swinging. At least her thighs were in focus? I kind of like the streaked, painted look of the background though.
Ah. Her face is pretty well focused in this one. Lots of movement. I like this one.
This would've been good had her arm not been in front of her face. Lots of motion going on here- look at our neighbor's garage windows. I like the streaked look in this one too.
I tried to get some of her running too. She was such a sweetie to be my little model that night. :) I didn't like these as much, again, mostly because of the background. I guess the swing ones were a bit cluttered too, but it would've been worse had I faced the other direction. LOL!
That's all I have for now!
More tips.
** You may want to use a tripod to reduce the chance of camera shake, which goes along with using slower shutter speeds. (that's too much of a bother for me... :)
** You may also want to try using a focusing mode like AI servo, which is supposed to track focus on moving objects. I have not tried this, but should! I'm not sure if panning your camera will mess up your focus in this mode or not though, but it's worth a try.
** Adjust your shutter speed relative to the speed of your subject- 1/30 is generally a good place to start for most subjects. But if your subject is a bit slow-moving, slow down your shutter speed even more than that, bit by bit. If you're shooting, say, a race car, you will need to speed it up a bit.
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Oct. 16, 2008 - can't wait