How to Capture Outstanding Motion Photos with Panning

By Light Stalking on 18 Mar 2009 in Shooting[ 7 Comments ]

One very cool technique to capture movement in your photographs is known as panning.

It basically results in an in-focus subject with a streaked background in your photos. Luckily, it isn’t as difficult as you might think to capture panning photos like these taken by Baptiste Pons and Sighthound from Flickr:

Shutter Priority Mode

An easy way to do it on most DSLRs is to set your camera to shutter priority mode. Set a slow shutter speed like 1/15th of a second. As the subject of your photo moves start following them in your view finder. As the subject crosses immediately in front of you, take the photo while continuing to follow them with your camera.

And that’s the easy way to take a panning photo using shutter priority. It gives you the added advantage of not having to set or mess with aperture which saves time when you’re shooting action shots.

A few tips to remember:

If your camera’s auto-focus is a bit slow, you might need to manually focus on a predetermined position.
If possible, shoot subjects that move in a straight trajectory for best results.
You need to take into account shutter lag, especially on older cameras

Check out these other panning photography tutorials:

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Tags: panning

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7 Comments

Ilan:

Don’t forget – A steady hand is important as well.

March 18, 2009 at 11:17 pmReply
- LightStalking:
  
  Yup, I should have mentioned to be concious of that, especially at the point where you actuallly take the pic as that can have an effect on the trajectory of the camera. Thanks Ilan.
  
  March 19, 2009 at 1:33 pmReply
Michael Marks:

Nice intro into panning. I've written an article on panning at car races if you want more info.

http://michaelamarks.com/?p=28

Cheers

February 15, 2010 at 7:53 pmReply
Stuart McMillan:

It's all in the hips. I find that way you maintain a smooth panning action.

February 23, 2010 at 11:15 amReply
rod rodriguez:

I'm so happy to be a member here, very informative… thanks!

March 5, 2010 at 2:00 amReply
17 Awesome Action Shots | Light Stalking:

[...] a combination of all and in the end, some really nice captures. Don’t forget to check out our tutorial on panning to see how a lot of these photos were [...]

March 29, 2010 at 5:10 amReply
Panning « Mike Victorino Photography:

[...] ago was panning. There is a great tutorial that you can read about panning at Lightstalking right here. I am finding that the more I practice, the better my shots are coming out. Today, I [...]

July 13, 2011 at 9:21 pmReply