Photo courtesy of Ichwan Hakeem[/caption]
Panning means the act of moving the camera horizontally to scan an object in motion. If you want to pan your camera right, you need to match your subject’s speed as well as direction with as much precision as possible. This means you need to follow the moving subject. So what is the trick to successful panning? Well, there are a couple of them that you can use to perfect the art of panning.
When you generally shoot at slow shutter speeds, keeping the camera static, the result is a blurred subject. On the other hand, panning portrays speed and motion in an image, without blurring the subject. The subject remains crisp and detailed while the remaining portion is blurred in order to portray motion.- The key is to work with a slow shutter speed and a steady hand. The exact shutter speed will be decided by your subject’s speed. In general, the shutter speed should be no more than 1/2000th. It can go lower for slower moving objects.
- Work with a faster shutter speed to achieve crisp results the easy way. If you lower down the shutter speed too much while you’re still a beginner, chances are you will not be able to portray the motion very well. Work with faster shutter speed until you gain some experience and confidence.
- Another way to keep your subject sharp and crisp is to let it stay in the same part of the frame during the entire length of the exposure.
- The difficulty level of panning increases with the speed of the subject. This makes it difficult to follow tip#3 as it gets increasingly difficult to keep the subject in the same part of the frame as the subject moves very fast—too fast for you to move and catch up. Therefore, practice with relatively slower subjects during the beginning stages, gradually working your way up to faster subjects.
- Beginners may find it tough to match their speed with the speed of their subject. At other times, you might find yourself going faster than needed. If you move faster than your subject, the image will come out blurry—too blurry to show any details at all. Synchronization is a commonly faced problem by all photographers during the beginning stages of learning how to pan. Usually, you would stand firmly, keep the camera steady in your hands, wait for your subject and then zoom with it. But how do you make sure you are moving at the same speed as your subject? Here’s a trick: to get the hang of things, start practicing by spinning around with your subject. No kidding! Take an object in one hand and hold your camera to your eye with the other hand, and spin! When you spin in a circle with your subject, you will move at the exact same speed. No more sweating about matching the subject’s speed! This is a good way to practice for beginners.
- That’s all, folks! Have fun with your camera and practice till you gain confidence and success at panning. No matter what, do not give up!