About Panning

First remember that all said and done it's all about having fun

I'm not an expert on panning, but thought that to keep this blog alive I will write something. So why not about panning.


Don't let the "right technique" "the rules" "the perfect exposure" etc. worry you too much. Experiment, click and have tons of fun.


The idea


Take a picture of a moving subject with the subject frozen and the background blurred.


Here is how it works

(1) You focus on a moving subject.
(2) Track the subject while keeping it in focus.
(3) Press the shutter while still moving the camera.


A few things you need to know


(1) If you are taking such pictures right at the road side then be prepared for some suspicious looks.
(2) If the shutter speed is too fast then nothing will be blurred and everything is simply frozen.
(3) If the shutter speed is too slow then keeping your hand steady might be a problem.
(4) Plus you need to track the subject nicely. Say you are taking a panning picture of a car. If your hand holding the camera is moving too fast it won't work. If it moves too slow it won't work. It moves up and down you will get something different. In all these cases everything will be blurred.


On my Nikon there are 3 auto-focus points which can be seen as small boxes through the view finder. When taking a panning picture of a car I typically frame the shot such that for e.g. the car window is in one of these boxes. Then when I need to move the camera for the panning picture, I try to move the camera such that the window stays right in the box. That just helps me check if I'm moving the hand too fast too slow, up or down.


Here are some hand-held panning pictures which I took today evening.