Motion Photography, Panning

Capturing Motion in Photography

(ISO 100/ F22/ 0”6sec/ hand held)

After the practical session (Task 1B) I decided to find out more about capturing motion in photography. I thought there must be a proper technique to getting such images. I’ll start off with the basics. The faster the shutter speed the more focused the subject is and slower the shutter speed the more blurred the moving subject will appear.  Blurring the subject with a background in focus requires that you use a slower shutter speed and that you use a tripod to avoid camera shake. Having a blurred background with the subject in focus still requires you to use a slower shutter speed but without a tripod. This technique is known as ‘panning’ which means you follow the direction in both the subject.

Panning

‘Panning’ requires that you move the camera along the same direction of the subject, whiles matching its speed.  The best results occur when you have a clear view of the moving subject and room to swivel the camera along a parallel access to it.

Whiles practising panning it is best to us S mode on you camera to regulate the shutter speed, so you do not have to worry about other aspects of the camera set up. On my camera it's known as TV mode (why make it hard for yourself right). According to the research I should try 1/125 seconds and see how sharp the subject is. Compared to how much motion there is in the background. If there is not enough motion in the background then allow the shutter to stay open longer and if the subject is to blurred the decrease the amount of time the shutter is open. All this takes practice and patience.

This image is an example of how ‘panning’ with a higher shutter speed gives you a much sharper subject, while still having the blur effect of the background. The key with anything new is experimentation and I intend to do so.

Panning and Focus

There are two ways to focus when panning AF mode or MF mode. Auto focus can produce mixed results if you're not at the right speed to follow the focus of your moving target.

However, manual focus can provide more consistent results, but it takes practice and patience.  You can us AF mode to focus on the area you think the subject is going over and then change it to MF mode to keep the focus on that area; meaning that the camera will not try to refocus once the subject appears in the frame. It says on the website that doing this prevents camera shoot delay if the camera tries to refocus. When planning  time and precision is everything.

Another way to capture movement is by freezing the subject, by increasing this shutter speed to capture a motion or action occurring for example a bird in flight.  This freezing of the subject can also express movement. The faster this shutter speed the more defined subject is.

A different and effective method for caption motion in an image is Chrono photography. Using continuous shooting on the camera, with a tripod, you can capture a series of shots and join them together in the post processing stage using photo shop. I hope I get too try this method later on after this unit, with the help and guidance of my teachers.

The website I used to get my information from posted these questions to ask yourself when determine proper shutter speed. How fast is the subject moving? What’s the distance between the camera and the subject? How much motion do you want to convey in your image?

These are all very relevant questions I've never really thought about before, so in the future I am going to practice panning and also think of different ways I can use my camera to capture motion. When slowing the shutter speed to blur elements in an image, there's a chance that too much light is passing it through onto the light-sensitive receptors in the digital camera making the image turn out overexposed. Tried avoiding this by adjusting the aperture on the camera, but remember this affects the depth of field. So, try changing the ISO on the camera to reduce the sensitivity of the light receptors in the camera.

 In film camera you must set the ISO according to the film sensitivity and this cannot be changed. Well that’s not entirely true, you can alter the ISO with some film but it requires experience and intense knowledge of how the film will react to changing the ISO on the camera. This process is known as ‘pushing and pulling’ and I hope later on that I will be able to use this technique as I found that using film with the sensitivity of ISO 400 during bright weather caused my negatives to turn out dense.

Time for a practice shoot

(ISO 400/F8/ 1/30sec)

For practising panning I decided to go out into town with my friend and have her walk/run in front of the camera while I try to capture the motion of her moving. I decided to stick with the ISO of 400 because that is the ISO setting of the film I will be using. I stared of at 1/30 of a second as that is supposed to be the limit to capturing motion without the need of a tripod. When I tried to get a sharp image on a higher shutter speed I found the she was very static within the image and there wasn't much blur in the background. This means that when capturing something in motion in order to get the blurred background in sharp focus the subject itself must be moving at a high speed, if not using a longer shutter speed is necessary. I really like this image I have captured the blur effect in the background with Sophie partly in focus, but I do not like how her face is unfocused even though you can still tell what she looks like. I think that is the one drawback to this image, other than that this is perfect example of capturing the motion of a slow moving subject. At the time my camera was always trying to refocus when Sophie re-entered the frame, so I focused on her using AF mode where she was going to appear and then had her walk out of the frame, so I could change the camera to manual focus. It is convenient to have her in stand in place to get my focus, but I know I should practice for subjects I can’t willingly control. During the shoot I felt that that the autofocus point was kind of everywhere, so I changed the autofocus point selection option in my camera to have the focus directly central. That way whatever I was directly pointing at would be in focus.

(ISO 400/F4/ 1/100sec)

(ISO 400/F4/ 1/125sec)

After determining that the subject itself needs to be moving quicker, in order to get a sharper image, I asked my friend to run past me while I panned her.  I did set of images at 1/100 of a second and another at 1/125 of the second to see if I could see a difference. Other than the image the second time I did it been slightly darker there isn't much difference between the two settings. I found that panning while she ran past me on a faster shutter speed made it so that she was far more in focus then at 1/30.

Evaluation of ‘Panning’

The technique of ‘panning’ is very useful in capturing motion without having to worry too much about the image bleeding, due to being over exposed. The image at the very top of this presentation is very effective in its own way, but is impractical when applied to the type of film I will be using. That is why I felt the need to go out and practice, before reshooting with my film camera. I know I have a long way to go as a photographer, but the more I practice the better I will become.