advice for this panning motion shot?

[hyimted]

my first attempt at trying to convey motion. a very generic shot, but i was really going for technique above all else. i just basically stood on the street and kept taking shots of the cars driving by. i swear, i thought a cop was gonna pull up sooner or later. finally found one i kinda liked, but it was really more luck then anything else.

exif: 200, 54mm, f/29, 1/50



i think i have three specific questions:

1. how do i know what shutter speed to use?
2. when am i supposed to actually press the shutter?
3. any specific tips or techniques you find helpful?

thanks!

[prabbit237]

Originally Posted by hyimted

1. how do i know what shutter speed to use?

It all depends on the speed of the thing yer trying to "freeze" (in this case, the car.) The slower the shutter speed, the more the background blurs but also the more likely the frozen object will also be blurred. I wouldn't try to go any less than 1/50 or so (basically what ya had here.)

Originally Posted by hyimted

2. when am i supposed to actually press the shutter?

When ya want it to take the picture is usually a good time In all seriousness, there's no right answer there. Just try and plan the shot ahead of time (if at all possible) and figure out what's going to be in the background and then hit the shutter when ya get to that point in the panning. Basically, just takes some practice. The main thing is not to jerk the camera when hitting the shutter. Just like a sniper pulling the trigger, you want it to be a fluid motion.

Originally Posted by hyimted

3. any specific tips or techniques you find helpful?

Practice, practice and then practice some more.

I would probably have dropped the ISO and then opened up the aperture a notch on that shot (Basically, always use the lowest ISO you can for any given shot to cut down on any noise. Sometimes, due to light conditions, etc, you'd need to go higher but if possible, always keep it at 80 ISO. 80 ISO and f/16 would have still given a good depth of field so focusing wouldn't have been much of an issue but would still probably have given a shutter speed of 1/50 or so.)

Also, try and get the focus set well before the actual shot if possible. Again, if ya have a few seconds to plan, aim at something about the right distance away and half-press the shutter button to set the focus. Then swing around to catch the car or what-ever and start the pan. Of course, if yer photographing something like a football game, ya can't plan the shot ahead of time. But if ya got something like someone driving a car by ya, you can get ready while they're still down the block.

Then again, I'm still a rank amateur myself and all of the above is the worse advice ya could get from anyone

[hyimted]

Originally Posted by prabbit237

I would probably have dropped the ISO and then opened up the aperture a notch on that shot

thanks for the detailed reply ... much appreciated!

btw, i'm still trying to get my head around the aperture terminology. all i know is the lower the number, the shallower the depth of field. if i understand correctly, when somebody says "open up" the aperture, they're actually talking about making the f-stop *smaller*? that's why you said to go to f/16?

[RichardTaylor]

This tute, of mine, may help.

Panning: Motor sport

"Open up" means make the aperture wider. In other words a go from F11 to F5.6 for example.

[prabbit237]

Originally Posted by hyimted

thanks for the detailed reply ... much appreciated!

btw, i'm still trying to get my head around the aperture terminology. all i know is the lower the number, the shallower the depth of field. if i understand correctly, when somebody says "open up" the aperture, they're actually talking about making the f-stop *smaller*? that's why you said to go to f/16?

Basically, the smaller f numbers mean larger openings (if you take the lens off the camera and look through it, you can see the opening and see how it gets physically larger at low f-stop numbers and smaller at high ones. Note that some lens have a little pin that needs to be pressed in or else they open all the way so ya may have to hold that in while looking through it. The pin would normally be pressed in when the lens is on the camera.)

A lower f-stop allows in more light and thus allows for a shorter shutter speed at any given light level but also makes the depth of field narrower front to back and thus makes focusing harder or more important (pin-hole cameras get pretty much perfect focus cause they have such a tiny opening but they also require very long exposure times.) But for f/16, yer still gonna have a pretty wide depth of field at the distance of a car so that's probably not an issue for a shot like that.

Someone else had posted a thing about ISO, f-stop and shutter speed and I wish I had the link to that but it was basically using the analogy of 3 glasses partly filled with water. The water is the total light available. If you raise the ISO, you can pour more water into that glass from the shutter speed one or the f-stop one, thus making them smaller. If you lower the shutter speed, you can pour water from the shutter speed glass into the glass for f-stop, thus making the aperture smaller, etc.

As to the ISO, some cameras (i.e. "expensive" ) give great shots at even 1600 ISO but other cameras (i.e. "cheap" ) stink at even 80. But all cameras do better at lower ISO's than higher, so always try to keep that as low as possible. But for sports and other action shots where ya want to freeze everything, a higher ISO is probably best for the shot to give the shortest shutter speed possible.

[prabbit237]

Originally Posted by RichardTaylor

This tute, of mine, may help.

Panning: Motor sport

Ya got some nice shots on that page

[hyimted]

Originally Posted by prabbit237

Ya got some nice shots on that page

no kidding ... nice shots and a good writeup from both of you. thx again. it was helpful!

[RichardTaylor]

Thanks guys.

[ecate78]

Originally Posted by hyimted

thanks for the detailed reply ... much appreciated!

btw, i'm still trying to get my head around the aperture terminology. all i know is the lower the number, the shallower the depth of field. if i understand correctly, when somebody says "open up" the aperture, they're actually talking about making the f-stop *smaller*? that's why you said to go to f/16?

Hello!

Just want to add that the best way to not "jerk" the camera is to push the shooting button while still moving and continue the movement afterwards for a little.

I think that when people say "open up " they mean that diaphragm is open, which means smaller "f" number, as in f /1.8 (nearer zero). To understand this apparent paradox you have to remember that "f" represent the lower part of a fraction, where the top is 1. The maximum being 1on 1: 1/1 = 1[ Very few lenses are so luminous]. On the contrary if f is f/16 you have 1/16 ~ 0.xxxx.

Hope it was clear. By the way your panning is already quite good.

[hyimted]

Originally Posted by ecate78

Just want to add that the best way to not "jerk" the camera is to push the shooting button while still moving and continue the movement afterwards for a little.

ahh ... good tip ... thx!