We had an article about panning photography a couple of month ago, you can read it here – Panning Photography.
In General panning is all about capturing images while the main photographed object is in some kind of move, what kind of movement? Any type, it can be a car just passing by or driving away, a scooter or an athlete running. Panning is known by effect created by following the photographed object while this camera movement to keep track of the main subject creates a blurred background behind the photographed model. To achieve this you have to shoot at slower shutter speeds than you would have if you just wanted to shoot a clear image.
The two key points to great panning effect:
1.The camera and the photographed subject are moving together synchronized as one body.
2.The camera’s shutter speed has to be slow enough to let the panning effect take place. Not to slow so the photographed object will be blurred too and not to fast so the blur effect will be created.
You can see that both rules mentioned above are kept. The first – being in sync with the model isn’t so hard in this case, as we sit in opposite sides of a carousel, so we actually move together , but the trickiest part here is to set the proper shutter speed , this one was perfect at 1/25th sec and a wide 24mm, but the lens is Canon 24-105 f/4 with IS, so if you don’t have IS so should set your gear at least a half stop faster. The fun thing here is that you can do this trick with almost any pocket camera that will allow you basic manual settings.
If you’ll try slower shutter speeds you’ll get a decent amount of blur on your object, this what you might get if you go at 1/8th sec:
So what about you? Show me what you can do!
