the art of the pan

One basic shot rests at the very core of motorsports photography and thats the pan, a very basic shot thats pretty tricky to do well repeatdly hit the link to lean the best way to pan.
The basic principle of the pan is that you frame the car up as it travels towards you, you click as it becomes parallel to you you then keep it in the same framing as it travels away from you. Sounds simple and once you understand it, it is.
However there are multiple factors that can have an effect in how sharp your pan is. 

• Smooth Motion - this is making sure that the horizontal path the camera takes is the same as the one the object (car takes) the more undulations that one of the other path has that isnt replicated in the other will result in a softer image.
• Parallax shift - Whoa count those A's basicly with out getting into a physic degree this is the amount of variation between back out side corner moving and the front inside corner. because the outside corner has further to travel in relation to the camera it has to move faster resulting in only part of the car being sharp.  (with me so far?) The rate of parallax decreases the closer to the parallel the two objects become. 
• Bad Motion Blur- this is where the movement of the camera  is slower or faster than thatof the object meaning that the object is burled laterally.

The great thing is that when you know what your doing these problems are a snap to fix. HEres how.

Improving your Smooth Motion

To improve the fluidness of your pan the best thing you can do is wedge the camera into your body (having a SLR or large compact really helps at this point) grip the lense in your left hand 

with your arm pointing down so your elbow is bent 180 degrees and is facing the floor. Now Pull your arm into your body press the camera into your face, not so hard that your disfigure your nose but hard enough so that it dosent wobble around. With your right hand (trigger hand) you want to keep the angle as parallel to the floor as you can (see diagram). As you pan make sure that you twist from the hips to ensure you pan at a constant hight. 

Reducing parallax shift 

This is a simple fix, always ensure that you press the trigger as the object becomes parallel to you minimizing the effect.  Also ensure that your shutter speed isn't too slow (small number i.e 1/20) otherwise you will find that the car will pass the "sweet spot" and start to move off the parallel inducing the dreadded parallax shift.  

Notice how the front and rear of the bike are not sharp but the middle is, this is caused by the shift in parallax .

Reducing incorrect Motion Blur

Motion blur is the intended out come of this exercise how ever we don't want it on the focus of the frame only the background. To insure that the object stays sharp and the background stays blury follow these simple steps.

1. As soon as the car becomes visible start tracking its movement 
2. Continue to track its movement even after you have taken the photo
3. Make sure that your shutter speed isn't too slow, each person has their own limit experiment to find yours as you become more used to following the movement and adjusting to the changing rate of execration you will find you will be able to drop to slower speeds. As a starting point for a Top Fuel dragster somewhere in the relm of 1/800 should give you a nice basis to work from. 

How to set your camera up.

The best way to set your camera up for this sort of work is to select shutter priority mode. This is where you tell the camera what shutter speed you want in fractions of a second e.g 1/250 means the shutter will be open for 250th of a second. the camera then works out what the rest of the settings should be to ensure a correct exposure. 

Once you become more familiar with the workings of your camera you can also use manual mode which will allow you so control all aspects of the camera and thus gives you more controll over how the finished image will look.

Practice is the key to constancy.

Hope thats of some help. Let me know how you get on and as always feedback is always welcome.

Technically a great pan, aesthetically its naff but skill wise this is what is possible with a little practice(click to see the full image)