1st Attempt at Panning - C&C welcomed

havng asked for advice on panning in the 'motorsport talk' forum i headed out yesterday to try out panning for the first time.

attached are the results, i'll post more over the coming days when i've had time to sort through them all.

Is there a simple way to cut and paste the photo properties in Vista? most were taken 1/125 or 1/100.

C&C much appreciated. in particular the best metering setting to use. i noticed a number of shots only had one wheel in focus (the rest of the car wasn't sharp). for some reason i used spot metering....is this correct or would evaluative been better?

Hi Andrew,

If you look in John Thawley's blog there is an excellent section on panning. Their is a lot of "stuff" talked about how low can you go, but it is a collection of factors that make the difference. You can pan at 1/250 if you are standing on the pit wall with the car howling past you at full noise.

I normally pan in Tv mode using just one of the focus points. Speed of the shutter depends on what I want. On the pit wall at 1/80 or 1/100 I can get just a strip of the car in focus - due tothe physics not my skill - normally aiming for the nose of the car or the driver.

All but the top image look a little soft suggesting that you missed the pan slightly. No 1 is on the money - perhaps a higher angle next time to put the roof of the car below the armco barrier and a slightly tighter crop. There is a lot of dead space around the car.

The good thing about pans .... you can make the most ugly back grounds a blur of colours

Cheers Dave - Hope this helped

Hey Andrew, nice shots! I'm jealous you got a good one of the porsche. I didn't have much luck with that sucker. Were you standing up on the hill out by turn 3? I was in the truck.
I use spot metering with center point selected and ai servo. I do this cause it helps me get a relatively decent reading on exposure of the car. I had to use different Av for the white wrx compared to the black jag that was going around. I suppose if I used Tv it would have taken care of it for me. Course, you saw my pix, i'm still learning like you. Did you make it out to the motorcycle track day on sunday? it was COLD.

thanks for the feedback and helpful comments. that was me up on the hill by turn 3, i found that was my most consistent spot on the track although i'd have liked to have got up by turn 2, not sure if you can get up that far though? i figured that was you in the truck, couldn't make it on Sunday as i was standing out in the cold for 3 hours at footy training instead, you did a good job on the bikes considering the added speed/ acceleration. not sure if there are any events this weekend but i may head up there again to try and improve.

Andrew

that's pretty good for a first try! the one of the little blue car is a little blurred, but the rest look good.

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Andrew, I gotta agree with you. Out on that straight away is def the most consistent part of the track. Going into 4/5 is tough cause they're breaking pretty hard. I found that I like shooting different spots on the track with the bikes. Leaning over looks cool and it loads of fun. I checked snettertons website and I'm not sure if there's anything going on this weekend. I may head out there tomorrow am. It's "semi exclusive" testing. I think I might head out to Bedford this saturday if the weather is good.
For your pics did you try any post processing to sharpen them or are these straight from the cam?

Ogre if its a semi exclusive test it may possibly be a lock-out. Depends on what is there. Call the circuit office and they will tell you if entry is allowed or not. It may save you a wasted journey. (01953 887303)

Richard S

Hey Richard, I looked again at the website, it was for Bedford. So no morning shooting session for me. Thanks for the tip though.