In my photography class, my professor always said that panning was one of the hardest ways to capture motion when taking a picture. I kind of agree. Getting something to be blurry is pretty easy, and stopping something is motion is also pretty easy…but getting something juuuust right is tricky. I am of the impression that if you take a billion pictures, one is bound to come out right, so here is my “just right.”
You can see that the subject’s face is mainly in focus as the rest of the picture is blurred to indicate movement. I found a few tricks that helped me get this blurred effect.
1. Slow your shutter speed. I used 1/10 of a second, but I’ve seen other places say somewhere from 1/30 to 1/60. Whatever works. Basically you want it slow enough that as you move the camera, the light will “blur” because of the movement.
2. Pick your subject. What are you trying to capture in motion?
3. Keep your lens in AF. The camera body can be in manual mode, but I find that it’s kind of hard to manually focus on the subject as it’s moving. If you wanna try to turn the lens as your subject moves toward/away from you, that’s an awesome skill to have–go for it.
4. Get a tripod if you can. The steadier the movement, the better.
5. Pan or move the camera with the subject. You should start to follow the subject in your viewfinder early on (1). If you hold your shutter down half-way, it will help focus on the subject. As you turn your body to continue following them, press the shutter when the subject reaches your focus point (2). Even after you have pushed the button, continue to follow the subject smoothly along the path (3).
Don’t laugh at my little paintbrush drawing.
6. If you have a friend or husband who can continuously repeat motion for you, try taking a 50+ of him riding his bike around and around in circles, so you can get the perfect shot. 🙂
Thank you, Peter!
