Panning is a technique used to convey subject motion. Normally, when a moving object is shot with a low shutter speed, the moving object will be blurred. This shows that there is a moving object, but we cannot see it clearly. To illustrate motion better, what we actually want is to see the moving object clearly, not the background.

Track the subject

Panning allows us to do this. The camera should not stay still, but rather move to track the subject motion. This way, the subject is sharp but the background is blurred. Look at the first picture. Here, I tried to track the Ford GT-40 as well as I could and pressed the shutter in the middle of this tracking motion. (Don’t stop the motion when you press the shutter, that won’t work, follow through and try to take more frames if your camera shoots fast enough.)

Works best with an SLR

On an SLR it is very easy to track the subject smoothly because you can look through the viewfinder, and you can usually take the picture exactly when you want it because of the low shutter lag. With a normal compact camera with an LCD live view only, panning is much harder to do. Because the live view systems usually have some lag, it is hard to track the subject smoothly. Also, because the autofocus systems are much slower on compact cameras, it is hard to take the picture exactly when you want because of the long shutter lag. It could be helpful to already press the shutter halfway and let the camera autofocus when tracking to reduce the shutter lag.

Shutter speed is important

The other thing you have to keep in mind is the shutter speed. Depending on the speed and angle of the subject, you may need to experiment some. The car above was taken with a shutter speed of 1/160 s. The bird in the picture below needed a shutter speed of only 1/40 s. While both pictures are not perfect examples of panning, they still manage to convey the motion quite nicely. I had to experiment quite a bit to find the correct shutter speeds to get the right amount of blur.

If you choose a very low shutter speed, it becomes almost too hard to get the moving subject reasonably sharp so that basically all of the picture is blurred. If the shutter speed is too high, then the background doesn’t blur enought to convey the motion satisfactorily. Just try a few times to find a reasonable shutter speed.

Practice, practice, practice

The final point: Panning sounds like a really hard photography technique to get right. With a compact camera, it probably is next to impossible. With an SLR though, it is pretty doable. I had never tried it before because I thought I would never get it right, but after trying it out, I ended up with some pretty good results. The trick is to try a few shutter speeds to find the right range, and practice panning and you will get some nice pictures.

Failure can also be fun!

Even when you fail to pan properly it still can produce a fun result. My panning skill in the above picture is obviously terrible. But even so, I quite like the result. It has enough sharp bits in the picture to understand what it is. Don’t be afraid to fail, that can be good as well!