Pan shot help

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  • #1785
    ravnostic
    Participant

    Spent a good deal of time in the rain yesterday taking street shots and pan shots. Of the pans, only one came out as I had hoped, and I want to use it for the street submission instead.

    So suggestions on improving pan shots anyone?

    I’m working with a Canon XTi DSLR with a tripod; had experimented with 1/4 to 1/5 sec. exposures with highest f-stops I could get on 100 ISO (lowest I can).

    Also, I played dangerous and took some shots driving down a street; some of those came out VERY cool, with a clear car-in-front shot and everything toward the edge blurry. That wouldn’t be submission material would it, as it’s the vehicles in motion and not the camera? (Even so, I think I’ll post it w/o ‘vote’ button as it does look cool, unless you other farkers think that wouldn’t be appropriate.)

    #27083
    nobigdeal
    Participant

    For panning you really want to use a faster shutter speed. 1/50 or better, depending how fast the subject is moving.Follow your subject with the camera and shoot. The goal is to get the moving object clear and focused and a blurry background. Your better off shooting in Tv mode(shutter priority). Also using servo mode for your focus.

    #27084
    ravnostic
    Participant

    That fast!?! Totally backwards from what I was thinking. I was trying for airplanes landing, and given my proximity (about 1 mile), I’d not think they’d go fast enough to get any blur. Same with the metro rail. (I did get a couple of kids in a crosswalk and a bicylist and kid, which I may use.) I’ll have to change my thinking; thanks for the tips. Reminds me that I did some shots of my brother’s rem-control car that came out well and if I recall, had the blur effect. I’ll have to hunt those down and look.

    #27085
    sleeping
    Participant

    Yeah, a lot of the time, 1/500 is going to be too fast to get any panning effect (you’d have to be quite close to something moving at significant speed). But by the same token 1/4 is slow enough to be tricky to get decent results with (not impossible, but requiring some practice). You probably want to start somewhere closer to 1/30 – 1/60 to get decent results with a fair degree of repeatability. But that also means finding a situation where that’s giving you the right amount of movement – you’d probably need to get closer to the planes than a mile to get a real panning effect at that shutter speed.

    #27086
    ravnostic
    Participant

    …and then the problem gets to be a lens wide enough to capture the plane and enough of it’s background. I can only get down to 14mm with a wide angle lens; might be enough. Thanks for your help, sleeping.

    #27087
    nobigdeal
    Participant

    Yeah, a lot of the time, 1/500 is going to be too fast to get any panning effect (you’d have to be quite close to something moving at significant speed). But by the same token 1/4 is slow enough to be tricky to get decent results with (not impossible, but requiring some practice). You probably want to start somewhere closer to 1/30 – 1/60 to get decent results with a fair degree of repeatability. But that also means finding a situation where that’s giving you the right amount of movement – you’d probably need to get closer to the planes than a mile to get a real panning effect at that shutter speed.

    yea I added 1 too many zeros there… You really need to experiment with shutter speed. 1/500 will work on a race car going 100mph. 1/50 – 1/125 is best depending on speed of subject and focal length.

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