Panning tips?

[tymill]

I've been working on trying to take panning shots of moving cars - it's tricky!

Any tips to help out? I've only got a compact camera (Panasonic lumix dmc-zs3), but am pretty pleased with some results last weekend at a race in California. More shots in this gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/tiyen.mi...eat=directlink
(and a few more shots over in the trucks section)

In particular, I'm not sure if the image stabilisation is helping me or hurting me when taking this kind of shot. My camera's got 2 "modes" for "optical stabilisation", but I'm not sure how it all works.





on this shot, the front of the car is blurry - is that likely because I'm focussed at the wrong distance, or it it something to do with the front of the car moving across the visual field in a some slightly different direction to the pan as the car is turning perhaps? (does that make sense??)

I noticed a few of my panning attempts wound up with the back of the car crisp, but hte front blurry. I can't imagine that the depth of field on my little handheld camera is so tight that the focus is a prob. But hey - I'm a novice - could well be very wrong!

Any tips or comments appreciated, thanks!

[mole2k]

The blurriness of the front of the car comes from the point you are picking on the car to pan around. Ideally you would be looking to pan around a specific point on the car as opposed to the actual car itself, I normally pick the front wheel nut and try to aim the camera at that. It makes it gives you a more accurate thing to track and should make the front end of the car sharper with the motion blur affecting the back of the car which is much more pleasing looking than the rear end sharp.

Not an R/C shot but the theory is exactly the same you can see were i've panned around the line of the front wheel and thats left a fairly small section sharp as it's been panned with an ultrawide angle.

[tymill]

Originally Posted by mole2k

The blurriness of the front of the car comes from the point you are picking on the car to pan around.

Thanks - that makes a lot of sense, and I can see what to do to improve. I was just basically trying to aim for the car _in general_. Hmm. It wasn't exactly a surgical precision type of deal...

I suppose this is esp important for when the cars are coming towards the camera, as when the car's going sideways it prob doesn't matter as much.

Cheers for the feedback!

Just wish we had more of that cool dirt to race on over here....
Ty

and hey -that's an awesome shot of the escort!

[Big G]

Finally managed to get a half decent panning photo of Jeff's car in the first race before going to get my own car ready to race. the Mrs took the rest of the photos for the day

Taken with my Canon 450D
f5.6 1/320 shutter 55mm

got a sneaky suspicion at the back of my mind that I left the Image Stabliser on all day lol

[Spoolio]

Also, particularly when doing an angled shot (to reinforce the suggestion of speed) try to have some free space in front of the object for it to drive into rather than having a shot of the dead space behind it.

On my older Canon lens there are 2 IS modes, mode 2 is the one I'm supposed to use for moving shots - I think it's something to do with turning off image stabilisation in one of the planes (vertical or horizontal, not sure) as it's not needed when the lens is actually meant to be moved, perhaps your Lumix has the same sort of thing.

[JCJC]

Tymill, shots look good to me, we always think to chuckout a high percentage, sometimes totaly missing the car when panning, front could be a bit blury due to upwards movement - not helpful when panning.

Big G, 'Taken with my Canon 450D, f5.6 1/320 shutter 55mm', have you thought about moving the iso setting up, this will increase shutter speed, we mostly up to 400 or 800 outside, other week inside at PDA we were up to 1600 !
(these canons can be used at 400 or 800iso without much loss)

[mole2k]

Here's a couple of panned r/c shots i've taken:

[tymill]

Wow Mole2K - the sense of speed in that second shot is pretty cool. Grass really looks great for RC shots. I just can't get astro to look interesting at all, but you've managed it in the first shot. Nice.

Spoolio, yeah - I'll look into the modes - it's just a compact camera after all, so I'm not too sure how complex the IS is. I think it just set on "auto". Hmm. Will research.

BigG, cool shot. I usually crop in a bit on shots like that, but I think I might have gone a bit nuts with the 'ole croppage... Nice one though!

JCJC, cheers for the encouraging words!

Nevertheless, I must say that dirt does look cool though. With some of the other shots from that afternoon in California I got the panning a bit sharper.

I like this first one even though the primary car's a bit blurry since you can clearly see the other car totally blurred out. (That car's streaky paintjob helps too!)




Quite chuffed with the sharpness of this one.



Again, got this one sharp in the back, and blurry in the front. Bummer though, as it'd have been cool!



If this one'd been sharper it'd have got some good story-telling value as the driver's at opposite lock trying to recover!



These last two really show off how great dirt looks!






Thanks for the tips - can't wait to take more photos. We need some dirt track over here though!

[Big G]

I think I was probably on ISO1600. can't really remember. It was left on auto at the start and then I turned it up, but when the sun came out it was way too bright.

[tymill]

I think I'm finally getting the hang of this! Love it...


Thanks for the help.. can always improve.

higher res and a good few more attempts on http://picasaweb.google.com/tiyen.mi...KmQvb-86NKATw#

Cheers,
Ty

[telboy]

I always find that if I want a photo of a particular car, I just take a pic of it everytime it goes by. If (like your first shots) I cant get a good shot of it coming through a corner towards you, then I just knock the shutter speed up one notch. This usually helps.

For panning speed shots you can knock the shutter speed up quite a bit more, as the background will always have motion blur.
Try not to get tempted into wanting loads of motion blur, just a little is enough most of the time.

I'd rather have a sharp looking car than a nice blur in the background.
Some of my shots from RHR last year...

[telboy]

If you look at this pic of yours, your focal point is on the apex of the corner, so try and pick your focal point using manual focus, and getting the shot as the car passes that point, rather than relying on any auto focus to pick it up.

[tymill]

Originally Posted by telboy

If you look at this pic of yours, your focal point is on the apex of the corner, so try and pick your focal point using manual focus, and getting the shot as the car passes that point, rather than relying on any auto focus to pick it up.

Cheers for the tips and feedback, Terry!

Yeah, I try to set the focus to the location where I expect the car to be, but it doesn't always work according to plan... I've only got a compact camera after all. Nevertheless, it worked out pretty well for that shot of Matt Benfield's car above at least.

I really like shots where only the subject car is in focus and everything else (esp other cars) are blurred. This is the basic idea I'm striving for...


but even so, it's so tough to get the focus and the pan and the timing and the apeture and the speed and the iso all right... a challenge!

still workin' on it...

as you say, luckily you usually get 12 or so chances per race!

Thanks for the tips though

Cheers,
Ty

[telboy]

No probs,
Does your camera have the shutter speed settings? and the ability to manual focus?

What camera do you use?

What I found when I used compacts, is that it would take the photo about one second after I pressed the button. So it was a case of guessing where the car would be 1 sec after I pressed the button!

[mole2k]

Yeah the shutter delay on compacts make them much harder to photograph action stuff.
A normal DLR has a shutter delay of around 60ms a pro spec one nearly half that. Compared to near 1 second on a compact!

[Panic]

cool shots guys. unfo i m miles away from getting it right...here are some photos i took on saturday fm our indoor race...i love action/motion/shots but still cant seem to get it right.

[tymill]

Originally Posted by telboy

No probs,
Does your camera have the shutter speed settings? and the ability to manual focus?

What camera do you use?

What I found when I used compacts, is that it would take the photo about one second after I pressed the button. So it was a case of guessing where the car would be 1 sec after I pressed the button!

It's a panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 - really nice camera for what it's designed for (compact superzoom travel camera)

But yeah, the delay before taking the shot, and the lack of direct manual control over focus or some settings does kind of drag a bit.

Nevertheless, I'm getting better at out-witting it's AI... Man vs Machine!

Cheers,
Ty

[tymill]

Originally Posted by Panic

cool shots guys. unfo i m miles away from getting it right...here are some photos i took on saturday fm our indoor race...i love action/motion/shots but still cant seem to get it right.

In my experience I've found it much trickier to get panning shots just right indoors as there's so much less light. I've always had the best results with really bright sunshine. Even cloudy says seem to produce much worse results. So hang in there... summer's coming! Any outdoor tracks nearby?

Cheers,
Ty

[Panic]

Originally Posted by tymill

In my experience I've found it much trickier to get panning shots just right indoors as there's so much less light. I've always had the best results with really bright sunshine. Even cloudy says seem to produce much worse results. So hang in there... summer's coming! Any outdoor tracks nearby?

Cheers,
Ty

yup we have one and thats what i m waiting for too... .