How to Capture Motion Blur in Photography with Panning

Posted by on
In motion photography, one useful technique to capture a swiftly moving subject in focus, while blurring the background is panning. The basic idea behind panning is that you pan your camera along in time with the moving subject and end up getting a relatively sharp subject but a blurred background. This gives the shot a feeling of movement and speed. It’s particularly useful in capturing fast moving subjects.

As said, panning requires you to move your camera with your subject. Specifically, you’ll be matching your subject’s rate of movement and the direction in which it is traveling. Panning work best with moving subjects that are on a relatively straight trajectory which allows you to predict where they’ll be moving to. The best results occur when you have a clear view of the moving object and ample room to swivel your camera along a parallel axis to it. 


Panning is not difficult to implement but rather hard to master. Before composing, the camera settings have to be adjusted as follows:
  • AF Frame: Center
  • AF Frame Size: Small
  • Servo AF: On
  • IS Mode: Panning

The settings are necessary to keep the subject within the AF Frame box when panning the camera parallel with the subject's movement. Servo AF is turned on to ensure that the focus stays on the subject within the AF Frame. With IS switched to panning, the image stabilization only counters up and down motion. This option is recommended for shooting objects moving horizontally.

Other tips to take note:
  • Shoot in Shutter Priority Mode (Tv) so that you can control the shutter speed directly
  • Use a shutter speed that is slow enough to blur the background as you pan the camera but fast enough so that the subject is not blurred by relative camera shake
  • Choose suitable time and place (low light condition) to avoid overexposure due to the slow shutter speed
  • If it's too bright, other options include switching to Manual Mode and shoot at aperture f8.0, ISO 80 or even negative exposure compensation
  • Try to get a little more space in front of the subject than behind, so that it is moving into the shot and not out of it

Comments

Post a Comment