Pan shots are a fantastic way of showing speed when taking photos of mountain bikers, but how do you create them? Matt Delorme, a professional photographer who just so happens to work with Pinkbike, explains how you can make even the slowest riders look lightning fast.
Is it easier to try this in a spot where you are close to the rider, with a big angle that your lens is travelling through, or is it easier to be farther away with a longer lens?
Based on experience, closer w/ a wider lens will be more forgiving, if only b/c it's harder to keep subject in shot while panning on a telephoto lens. Either way, I'd work out focus distance w/ the early racers so you could lock focus into Manual to prevent the lens from hunting as you shoot the Pro's / your friends (unless you've got a $6k camera body / $4k+ lens setup, then built-in super-sharp / fast autofocus features should allow you to shoot however you'd like)
Keeping the shutter speed the same for both Further away (to a point obvs) is easier. Basically the shorter the distance the camera moves the easier it is. A wide angle close pan is a lot harder to get sharp than one from a distance. Go out and give it a go though as everyone's different but Im going to take an educated guess that you'll have more keepers shooting pans at 100-200mm rather than 16-24mm .
I would have expected it to be easier with a normal or longer lens (anything between say 50-200mm), not a wide angle. Was a little surprised to see Mr. Delorme shooting with what looks to be a wide-angle prime.
I guess I'll have to go out and experiment to see what works for me, but it's always more fun when you can set yourself up for quicker success. That way you have a chance of actually getting people decent shots for their time spent riding in front of your camera.
@JaredHarzan you'll get more motion blur out of a longer lens, meaning you can use a faster shutter speed for the same amount of blur. The longer lens will also have a narrow depth of field and be harder to keep the entire rider in frame. Long lens pans seem to be best for more abstract shots where the rider is pasted against a complete blur.
Wider angle shots will need a slower shutter speed for the same blur, and depending on your composition may give your shot more context. Some shooters (Sterl is amazing at this) do really well with subtle pans in wide angle shots to get the rider and bike to pop.
@mdelorme: Are you saying it's easier to shoot a pan while close to the rider with a wide angle lens like a 25mm??? Curious why you think this? It's much easier to keep a subject in frame and sharp on a telephoto as they will appear to be moving slower and your camera travels less of a distance. Although biking maybe a little different than most sports as you don't always have room between you and your subject, it's pretty widely taught that a telephoto will be much easier for pans in sports
Just curious, is there a reason you set the camera to M instead of S? I (non pro) usually set it to S for these kind of shots because shutter speed is leading and I'll leave it to the camera software to work out the aperture. As Mike was wearing a light shirt against a darker background, I would maybe have set it to 1/3 stop underexposure or so and then the software figures out what aperture should be.That said, I don't think I can work with ISO values that high. Under these conditions it would probably be an ISO of 400.
It's good practise to keep the camera in M the entire time, unless you're just shooting sporadically without too much thought.
It gives you far more control over the end product. I don't think I've used any of the auto modes once in the last 8+ years of shooting. Do it enough and you'll have a good idea of what settings you'll need given a specific scene.
Another good point when taking pan shots is to set up a 3rds grid or similar in your viewfinder - then keep the subject on one of the intersecting points. Keeping the subject in a static position in your viewfinder whilst tracking them allows you to follow their speed much more accurately and thus returns a more reliably sharp image.
@mdelorme What's the mount you have on your shoulder for the camera? Is it steady/strong enough to do some light riding if you need to get to a new shooting location?
The Peak Design Capture Clip is strong enough for more than light riding. The mount plate will rattle a little bit in the clip if the camera shakes around but it won't fall out. What terrain you can ride with the camera attached comes down to how confident you are not crashing on it since it is pretty exposed there.
@mdelorme What is the clip/mount/adapter that you have and allow to secure your camera on your backpack strap like we see at the end of the video? Thank you in advance.
Most likely, yes. I've had a Nokia Lumia 630 (back to Nokia 108 now as I don't like touchscreens) but yeah in the Windows software you could adjust settings like aperture, focus and shutter speed. I expect the same could be done with other brands and operating systems.
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I guess I'll have to go out and experiment to see what works for me, but it's always more fun when you can set yourself up for quicker success. That way you have a chance of actually getting people decent shots for their time spent riding in front of your camera.
Wider angle shots will need a slower shutter speed for the same blur, and depending on your composition may give your shot more context. Some shooters (Sterl is amazing at this) do really well with subtle pans in wide angle shots to get the rider and bike to pop.
It's much easier to keep a subject in frame and sharp on a telephoto as they will appear to be moving slower and your camera travels less of a distance. Although biking maybe a little different than most sports as you don't always have room between you and your subject, it's pretty widely taught that a telephoto will be much easier for pans in sports
It gives you far more control over the end product. I don't think I've used any of the auto modes once in the last 8+ years of shooting. Do it enough and you'll have a good idea of what settings you'll need given a specific scene.
Another good point when taking pan shots is to set up a 3rds grid or similar in your viewfinder - then keep the subject on one of the intersecting points. Keeping the subject in a static position in your viewfinder whilst tracking them allows you to follow their speed much more accurately and thus returns a more reliably sharp image.
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