Panning & Subject Sharpness...

Autofocus works fine, as someone else said turn off all IS it doesn't do anything and it does slow down focusing on a moving subject. I set the focus to the center point (personal choice) No fancy tools, but I have used a monopod because it takes the weight off and if I'm shooting for 8-9 hours, that's a nice assist.

You can get motion blur at 1/320 just fine at 300mm for example. I have the 100-400 and don't go past 350-360 for sharpest results. Nice lens!

Digital is free, it's not like film. Take more shots and cull out the bad ones, save the good ones. I don't like the "H" mode because it's a machine gun and then I have four times as many photos to review and edit. Just fine with the standard burst modes of DSLRs. 3-4 FPS is fast enough to get far too many images.

This one is 100% manual, including focus. Always amuses me that we pay thousands for all the electronics and auto this and than and then I shoot some of the best shots, in "M" with the AF off. :D A bit extreme but it was just for fun. 1/30th of a second panning.

almscarc12pan.jpg


almscarc12pan.jpg
 
The weather cleared up and I went out and tried again this evening. The spot I was in I couldn't get any real aggressive panning, so I was going for prop blur. No one likes a stopped prop. So I turned the IS off, put it in AE/AF, no AE lock setting and this is what I got.





All these were shot at ISO 800, 1/400. I tried a few at 100, but they were garbage. I'm happy with them, even though the panning was slow there was about a 200 mph difference between the two.



 
Do you guys telling the people to turn IS off, realize some lenses have two different IS modes? One for normal operation and one for panning?
 
those last airplane shots should not be panned. Just use the fastest shutter you can get with the light.
 
those last airplane shots should not be panned. Just use the fastest shutter you can get with the light.

But even with those shots you still need to have prop blur and anything higher than 400 makes the prop look like a toothpick or stops it. So its kind of the same situation with trying to get the target as sharp as I could.

I want eventually buy a used 70-200L non IS... So I figured I give it a shot. There was quite a bit of panning going on in #4. Obviously I wasn't 90 degrees to the target but he was closing in at at over 250mph and was just starting to pass.
 
So what exactly IS the definition of panning? For every shot I'm tracking a moving target. Or is there just a common understanding that for "real" panning you need to be shooting 90 degrees to your target (more or less)?
 
I'd say you're panning as long as you're following the subject with your camera. But then again, you're most likely panning to achieve the blurred background. When I see in a topic "panning" I'm anticipating some background blur, giving me a sense of speed and excitement. These are just my thoughts when I think about panning photography. There's no "real" or "true" definition of anything when it comes to photography techniques. As they say, one photo out of focus is a mistake, 10 is an experiment and 100 is a style. You develop your own style. You don't need to be at a perpendicular angle to your subject, but that is where the "panning effect" would be biggest.

I'd like to see someone pan a snail, now that would be awesome with background blur.. 30 sec shutter speed panning a brown snail!
 
I'd like to see someone pan a snail, now that would be awesome with background blur.. 30 sec shutter speed panning a brown snail!

Now THAT would kick ass! I have a 10 stop ND filter... I need to think about hot to set that up!
 

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