How to Take Panning Photos
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Knowing how to take panning photos is an essential skill for sports photography, but the panning photography techniques used for that genre can be applied to all sorts of action photography situations we may find ourselves doing, even if we’re simply wanting good pics of our kids or pets at the park.
What is panning and what is involved in how to take panning photos?
What is Panning?
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Panning is the action of moving the camera from side to side on a fairly centralized pivot point as opposed to tilt which is pointing up or down. The pivot point can be a tripod, monopod, tripod alternative camera mount, or handheld, both free-standing or on a gimbal.
Panning is one of the more common camera movements in videography and cinematography, usually done in a smooth, steady movement controlled by a fluid head or geared head on a video tripod. It can be used to follow a subject through a scene or as an establishing series to show the setting of the scene.
Panning can also be done in still photography, which can result in interesting action shots with the main subject mostly sharp and the background blurred. Another term that can be used to describe how to take panning photos is tracking the subject.
The amount of background blurring can be controlled with panning shot settings by any photographer who learns how to take panning photos. It’s a technique used by experienced and professional photographers that can be mastered by beginner and intermediate-level photography enthusiasts.
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How to Take Panning Photos
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Here’s how to take panning photos in a nutshell: Follow the motion of the subject with your camera, tracking along with their movement, taking the picture while still tracking or panning their motion.
An example of how to take panning photos can be seen at organized competitions that involve a lot of predictable movement, such as horse racing, car racing, track and field meets, football, baseball, soccer, and motocross.
Watch the photographers along the sidelines, when there is motion happening in their field of view, you will often see them swinging their camera rig across their body, swirling at the hip or perhaps using a monopod as support for their long lens.
When the motion is continuous, even if only for a little while, and mostly predictable, you can follow the subject, keeping them centered in your viewfinder, and capture their image while you keep your camera moving.
That's a very important point in how to take panning photos, you have to keep the camera moving during the exposure. In many cases, if you stop panning along with the subject’s motion, the moving subject will be blurred by motion with the background sharp, exactly the opposite of what should happen with panning photos.
Panning Photography Settings
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So what are the basic panning photography settings used in how to take panning photos? The two general ideas of panning shot settings are continuously active focus adjustment and a slower shutter speed.
These two criteria can actually be met with camera automation. The autofocus of modern cameras is amazingly accurate and very swift. The trick for how to take panning photos with AF is to choose the focusing mode that allows shutter release regardless of focus confirmation.
Often called AF-C, continuous, AF, Servo AI, Servo AF, or something along those lines. Single-shot AF, the default mode for most cameras, can be called focus priority because it won’t let the shutter release without a firm focus lock.
Continuous autofocus allows you to fire the shutter without a firm focus lock, but this doesn’t mean the image won’t be in focus. Since the servo is adjusting the focus continuously, there is actually a very high probability that most of the shots will be in perfect focus, especially when the subject is tracked with focus points kept on the subject. You can assign more than simply the central focus point.
Shutter speed priority is a good choice for exposure automation. By choosing your shutter speed, you can control how blurred the background becomes by your panning motion. You can also arrest a good amount of the motion from the actual subject, or have some motion blur if it, too. It will depend on the speed of the action and what you want sharp or blurred in the final image.
One more tip for how to take panning photos with the main subject mostly sharp and the background blurred, use movement that travels across the image frame. If the motion is moving towards or away from camera position, the panning technique won’t work, plus there are going to be focus concerns.
Practice how to take panning photos of your friends or family or your pets while spending some time at the park or in your own yard. If you have a tripod or monopod, try it out using them, also try your hand at panning shots freehand, being careful not to add any accidental up and down camera motion that will blur the entire picture.
