First Attempt at Panning

[PhotoRebel4]

I wanted to give this a try. So I headed out to my front yard to practice on cars that went by. This probably wasn't the best idea since it was fairly cold, and there's not much traffic on my street. There was a lot of sitting and waiting, lol.



Exif:
Canon XSi
Exposure: 1/50
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO: 100

The cars on my street are going fairly fast (55-65mph), so I wasn't using a very short shutter speed. I did try shorter than 1/50 and got horrible results.

This was probably the best of the 50-60 I shot before I got too cold and went back inside. It's not great, but I don't think it's too bad. The subject is in focus, and it does display a bit of motion blur. I like the looks of the pictures that used panning, so I'll keep trying...

Maybe on a street with more traffic.

[Penary]

You have an excellent photo, the more you practice the easier it gets. Without the gray area on the left side of the picture would improve the photo also. A tripod will help greatly. Thanks for sharing.

[SusanH1970]

Great job for your first try! The car is in really good focus with that nicely blurred bg. I do tons of these shots of my son riding his quad so I know how tough they can be to get right! You should be proud of yourself for this one.

[RichardTaylor]

That's pretty good for a first go.

You may find this group on Flickr of interest.

Flickr: PANNING SHOTS ONLY

[shmelly]

Always looks like it should be an easy thing to do, how wrong, but practice makes perfect and your off to a very good start. I would even try making the shutter speed a bit faster to get the car in focus, it looks like you had plenty of blurr going on. Experiment, and use a street with more traffic.

[PhotoRebel4]

Originally Posted by Penary

You have an excellent photo, the more you practice the easier it gets. Without the gray area on the left side of the picture would improve the photo also. A tripod will help greatly. Thanks for sharing.

I never though of using a tripod. I'll have to give that a try. I think it may help with the shots on a straight horizontal plane. I was going to crop that out too, but because it was just a practice shot, I didn't do any editting but my watermark.

Originally Posted by SusanH1970

Great job for your first try! The car is in really good focus with that nicely blurred bg. I do tons of these shots of my son riding his quad so I know how tough they can be to get right! You should be proud of yourself for this one.

Thanks, I do plan on practicing a lot more too!

Originally Posted by RichardTaylor

That's pretty good for a first go.

You may find this group on Flickr of interest.

Flickr: PANNING SHOTS ONLY

I'll definately check that group out, thanks!

Originally Posted by shmelly

Always looks like it should be an easy thing to do, how wrong, but practice makes perfect and your off to a very good start. I would even try making the shutter speed a bit faster to get the car in focus, it looks like you had plenty of blurr going on. Experiment, and use a street with more traffic.

Thank you. I'll try a faster shutter speed next time too! (and I'll find some more traffic)