Escaping the Monster

[jordand]

[RustBeltRaw]

Someone knows how to pan. These are really good. The moving silhouette in the first shot makes me wonder if there's some flash at work here, but the light looks totally natural. On closer inspection, are these composites?

[Brownbear]

Yes, these are wonderful. I'm just learning so nice to see these. There is a panning thread somewhere that you should post these on.

[Stagecoach]

Jordan,

Good action in these images, am I right in assuming you have enhanced the background blur in post?

[jordand]

To make the long story longer, my younger son, who finished third (on the second picture here) made me go there and make some photos.
With what I have in my bag I was to choose between Nikkor 50mm 1.4G and 55-200, so I took both.
I have no flash but even if I did have one, flashing in the eyes of someone dashing down the hill with 40+ kph is not a good idea.
On the spot I immediately realized the long zoom was of no use, because the light in the forest was quite dim. I wish I had something like 70-200 f/2.8 but for the moment this is far beyond my budget (downhill bikes, protectors and spare parts cost a lot) ;-))
So I set my Nikon D7000 with 50mm on to shutter speed priority, the ISO to 800 (high ISO noise reduction ON), and I must tell you, panning at f/1.8-2.8 was a challenge due to the shallow DOF.
It also took some testing to determine the best focusing mode. Initially I took some shots using continuous/servo focusing with auto focus set to 3D but I noticed it was difficult for the camera to lock accurately the focal point on the subject, so I switched to continuous-single point focusing, relying on steady hand rather than electronics.
As for the PP workflow, I always shoot RAW+JPEG Fine, using the second one as a reference.
My first step is to reduce the noise. For sharpening I use the technique of applying a second layer with High Pass filter, radius somewhere between 3.0-4.0 pixels, changing the blending mode for this layer to Vivid Light (the original recipe suggests Overlay).
Lex, Grahame, I admit I did apply some motion blur in the first photo for I wanted the portion of the monster banner to appear a bit sharper than the rest of the background. You can tell the difference when you compare it to the picture of my son, where the “Monster” is as blurred as the rest of the background.
The really difficult part was the masking of the blurred layer. I used a black (hide all) mask but In CS6 I found no tool capable to select accurately enough what I wanted to be selected so I started to zoom, move and manually paint with white over the black mask – soft brush, opacity 65.

[Stagecoach]

Hi Jordan,

Many thanks for the detailed explanation of how you produced these images. There are a few of us here who have recently started experimenting with and discussing panning action shots so the more we can learn the better.

Grahame

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[Brownbear]

Thank you for sharing. Very informative and helpful.