Capture the Perfect Panning Shot Every Time
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Capture the Perfect Panning Shot Every Time

on Mar 5th 2010 with 7 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Photoshop CS4
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Completion Time: 1-2 hours

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

In this video we will show you a simple camera technique that will add incredible impact to action images. Panning is the technique of capturing moving subjects sharply while allowing the background and foreground to blur with motion.

Watch the Video

Video Details

In this video we will show you a simple camera technique that will add incredible impact to action images. We start off with a brief location video showing Simon capturing panning shots of a child on a scooter.

We then discuss the correct camera technique for panning action shots, the advantages/disadvantages of hand holding versus using a tripod, and why the surface your subject is on can help produce better images.

Moving on, discussion turns to the appropriate camera settings – focus, shutter speed, lenses and distance, plus other tips for getting various effects. Following this we ask “How Sharp Should it Be?”

In the next section, “Lenses”, we show examples from our shoot and the various effects that different lenses and distances have on the images. Finally we show some panning examples from Simon’s car shoots.

Another Example Image

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Simon Plant is an award winning Uk Photographer with over 20 years experience shooting automotive-life-location images for advertising. He also produces Behind The Scenes Digital Photography Tutorials for his training site .  

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  • http://www.behance.net/insalaco V

    only for me the Image preview don’t work?

  • http:www.alohastatemedia.com Nate Volk

    Too bad he didn’t say anything about aperture. What effect does it have on panning shots?

  • http://michealbphoto.com Micheal B

    Hey Nate, aperture will control depth of field, and exposure.

    • Frederik

      He meants aperatures effect in relation to panning, not in general.
      Read the post pal.

      • Jared

        That is the only effect it will have on panning.

        In huge detail, obviously a wider aperture would make the focus point a little more difficult to work with, but if you’re panning for motion blur, a strong depth of field is completely pointless in almost all scenarios anyway. Plus, if you’re outdoors (where panning usually happens), sunlight would likely cause the aperture to be closed up a fair bit because your shutter speed will be lower than normal to capture the blur, so depth of field and it’s affect on focus points wouldn’t be an issue.

        In short, you would just treat aperture as an exposure setting and nothing else. You would set shutter speed first, depending on how much blur you want, then adjust aperture to generate a correct exposure.

  • http://appcrunch.co.uk Josh

    Thanks for the video, learnt some good tips that I will practice with next month when I get to the Tour of Epynt Rally.

  • http://taylorphotography.tumblr.com matt

    isn’t the point to have a sharp subject and have a blurry background? that is why you pan. if you wanted motion blur you would have a long shutter speed. but if you want a sharp subject the blurriness would be based on how fast you were panning. hope that all made sense.