Panning

Just read Scott's article about panning and went outside with my most willing subject (7 YO son) and out of 22 pictures, I only got 3 that I could call a success. ONLY ONE of those was of 7YO! The other two I snapped on the spur of the moment without time to change settings. My camera was set on Tv - 1/60 - ISO 100 (And the handy-dandy Cloudy white balance selection).

The Wild Man. 1 decent shot of 20 I took on his scooter or bike.
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The two 16 YO's coming home from school. Only shot I took of them.
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Some car I've never seen in the neighborhood. I was really far from the road at this point. I liked how it came out. Only shot I took of this.
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All the rest were blurry backgrounds (good) and slightly blurry subject (bad). Am I wiggling as I pan? And am I the only one who gets fooled by the LCD screen?? I thought I was doing really well until I saw them on the computer screen!

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These three came out great.

Any time you move the camera there's a chance of blurry subjects and, yes, the little LCD can fool you. It takes some practice to get the timing down. The percentage of keepers when panning is low so don't let that bother you. Try it with a slower shutter speed like 1/30th to really get a sense of motion for a subject like your son on the scooter. As I wrote, it depends on how fast the subject is going. The faster it goes, the higher the shutter speed you can use and still get the background blurry.

 

Nice work Molander! Panning is a lot of fun and can produce some great pictures.

I have the same problem with the LCD. Many of my panning shots look good on the LCD but are slightly blurred on the computer. I have found that if you zoom in on the photo on the LCD screen you get a better idea of whether its a keeper or not. When you zoom in, try looking at something with a sharp edge like lettering on a car. If that looks sharp, there's a good chance that its a keeper.

Post one or two of the bad ones so we can have a better look at the problem. You may either be wiggling the camera, or you could be out of sync with the speed of the moving object, but we'd have to see the images to tell for sure.

Here's two examples of what Scott said about the speed of the object in relation to the shutter speed:

1/60s f/5.3 at 52.0mm iso100, the horse is moving at 30mph


1/20s f/7.1 at 28.0mm iso100, the tractor is moving at 4mph

 

Oh! Ok. I'm supposed to have less keepers than trash. Hmmm...

I can't believe I'm going to post these after Michael's amazing pans but let's see if you can determine some of my errors. That Shutter Priority setting I used automatically set my f stop.

I jumped the gun on this one. He was moving at a pretty good clip. (He has no fear). But look how the background and Thomas are equally blurred.
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1/60, f7.1 at 20mm, ISO 100

I think I may have shrunk this one too much but can you see that only his hip is in focus? Weird.
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1/60, f7.1 at 20mm, ISO 100

And speaking of weird... look at his hair against the lake. It looks like I cut him out and pasted him on the background. This must have been one of those "Here he comes! I'm not ready! Click!" types.
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1/60, f7.1 at 29mm, ISO 100

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On the first one, he's coming at you on an angle. The subject needs to be perpendicular for best results when panning.

The second...how were you metering? Matrix, center-weighted or spot? If centered or spot, that would explain hitting the legs unstead of the torso and head area. You could move the focus point(s) to the upper part of the frame, too. The f/stop if fine. Good composition and love his expression.

The last one...dump to trash. ;D Hey, can't hit it all the time. I have taken lots of pans where the subject is half out of the frame. : His hair and lake both got blown out. You could turn down the EV a bit to see if that helps.

 

Metering with matrix or "evaluative" as my user guide calls it. <shrug> Maybe I didn't have time to auto focus or something. Wish I could remember exactly what I was doing with each shot!

 

Thanks Molander.

Exactly! I consider it a great day if I get 1 out of 5. You did really well for your first try. Keep practicing and you'll get more keepers.

Scott is exactly right that its easier to get good panning shots when the subject is perpendicular to you, but it is possible to get good shots at an angle. The more of an angle you're shooting at the harder it is and therefore you'll get less keepers. If I remember, I'll post a couple of examples when I get home.

I can't tell what's wrong with #1. I'm going to guess that the timing was just off.

#2 looks like the bike is almost sharp (hard to tell at low resolution). If its not sharp I'm going to guess that it would have a slight left to right blur meaning that your weren't panning at the exact speed that he was moving. It looks like there's a up an down blur on his face which I think is happening because he's peddling while standing up. If he peddles while sitting on the seat, you'll probably get more keepers.

#3 looks like a left to right blur meaning that the speed was a little off.

 

This wife and mother gig I've got going on is really cutting into my photography time. Sheesh!

OK...

I took some more yesterday afternoon and put some of your advice into play. I'm glad you reminded me to zoom with the LCD, Michael. (That was a "Duh Moment" when I read that.) Y'all are right... I need to aim for perpendicular when panning. I don't have any angel-panning skills at all... yet. (Trying to think positively!) I was brave and messed with the shutter speed a bit, too. Had a little trouble with exposure (lesson for another day). It was really sunny and I had to move to the other side of the drive way. Had to PP a bit 'cause the colors were a bit washed out.

Roger, you asked about the software with Canon... I didn't install it because I use a card reader and <am learning> Photoshop Elements 6 so I had to dig it out to see: ZoomBrowser EX 5.8, PhotoStitch 3.1, Camera TWAIN Driver 6.7 and EOS Utility 1.1. Is there a hidden gem in there I should be exploring?

You may remember I mentioned a "String Trick" in another post in PHOTOGRAPHY 101 - Cameras, Equipment, and TMIP Article Discussions > TMIP Article Discussion >Topic: Nighttime Photography Tips without Tripods. Wait... let me find it... Here it is: String Trick Post

Well, I tried it out yesterday and it DID seem to help (when I remembered to pull up on the string). Takes some getting used to. I got 6 keepers out of 23 photos this time. Here are a couple:

1/30, f8 at 23 mm, ISO 100
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LOVED this one but wish I had clicked a bit earlier to get his arm from in front of his face!

1/6, f7.1 at 23 mm, ISO 100
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Thanks for the help! I'll keep practicing.

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What about IS? It occurs to me that depending upon how the stabilization works on that camera it might try to stop the panning motion if it's turned on, potentially making the background a bit sharper and your subject a bit blurrier.

 

Good point Dan.

On Nikon lenses, there are two settings for VR. When set to "Normal," the lens detects panning and only compensates for vertical shake and when set to "Active" it tries to stop shake in both directions. If the camera was set to the wrong IS setting, it could prevent the shots from being sharp.

 

According to dpreview, the S5 IS has a panning setting. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons5is/page6.asp

 

Sure enough. Panning was there... never occurred to me to check. Will have to reset and try yet again!