Could you critique, please?

[Geoff F]

In the UK, I suspect that tea/coffee drinking is about 50/50 now. Personally I can't stand tea, but my coffee is mostly decaffeinated.

But back to the original question; if you find problems with holding a camera steady during a panning shot try a monopod. Usually I prefer a proper tripod but monopods have their uses sometimes.

[Wirefox]

no worries, I'm a lone female jogger myself, and a grey, middle-aged one at that. :-)

Ah my mind is at rest. I have been watching too many episodes of Criminal Minds

monopods have their uses sometimes

Indeed...you are much less likely to get mugged for your camera gear if you are carrying a 3ft night stick

[GreenTea]

LOL there's no street crime where I live. We may get a nuclear bomb courtesy of Iran any minute, but no robberies or stalking here.

[pixel pete]

Hi GreenTea,
I think you did okay with the camera you have. The problem is also the autofocus. It appears the camera focused on the background.

Point-and-shoot cameras are slow to react and takes quite some practice before you can predict what it does.

The suggestion to half depress the shutter is a good one. The problem is unless you have a continuous line of joggers passing before you to lock focus, you're going to have a devil of a time.

Perhaps shooting on manual mode is the way to go. It may shorten the camera's response time.

On Auto, half depressing causes
1) autofocus to trigger
2) camera to compute exposure
3) camera to figure out White Balance.

Try using manual and setting the exposure and White Balance before hand, the camera only needs to focus.

As far as panning goes, it is a crap shoot. It will require repeated practice before you get the hang of what your camera will do.

Here's an example with my Canon Powershot G3.


1/20 sec @ f4.7 IS0 100

You can try setting your exposure manually and locking focus by half depressing the shutter button if your subject is someone like me on the bicycle in this blog post.

I went back and forth along the same line so that my students had their cameras already focused at the same point every time.

The only thing left for them to do was experiment with focal length and getting the timing and panning motion smooth.

http://peterphun.com/blog/2009/04/14/studying-motion/

Good luck GreenTea!

[GreenTea]

Thanks pete, I agree, I think the shutter lag may have caused the photo to be taken after the jogger had already passed the focusing area.

I'm surprised such a young girl like you can ride a trycicle ;-)