“Panning” Technique
Freeze the movement of the subject and create the obvious blur in the surroundings (foreground and background), this techniques is known as “panning”. The important things in panning is setting a shutter speed that’s slow enough to create sufficient blur in the surrounding.
Here’s a simple guide to panning with any movement subject.
1. Use your camera’s continuous AF or Servo mode to focus and track a moving subject as it approaches you. This mode will allow your lens to adjust focus to keep your subject sharp as it approaches.
2. Set your shutter speed, then choose a point where you subject will pass and focus on it. There is a lot of outline for shutter speeds for panning, such as for motor sport racing, you may use shutter at 1/250 or 1/500 sec and for cycling, the shutter speed setting is 1/125 sec.
3. As it moves through the frame, swing your body same as the direction of your subject’s movement (left to right for the image above).
4. Just before your subject reaches the point you have focused on, press the shutter release button and simultaneously swinging your camera as your subject passes to keep your subject in the viewfinder.
5. For a better chance of shot, use your camera’s rapid burst mode to fire off multiple frames as the subject passes by.
It’s quite tricky and need a lot of practice before you get it just right. To get the best result , you may experiment it with different shutter speed. The key to success is in the smoothness of your pan.
