Practicing panning

[Donald]

A few days ago, I posted up some images of dogs (my dog and another we have staying with us at the moment). Well, got the gear out again to practice slowing the shutter down and panning, to try and get some energy and movement into the images.

This was very much an experimental/practice session, so please view with that in mind.

Seems to me that the secret is to get the head, particularly eyes, sharp. I haven't quite achieved that here. What is absolutely sharp is his collar. If you think about it, there must be a moment in the running cycle when the head is quite still. It's getting that moment that's the trick.

Anyway, please feel free to critique this. Interested to read the views of others.


40D, 70-200mm f/4L IS @ 200mm. ISO400. 1/90@f11.

[Stagecoach]

Donald, not sure if you followed Christina's horse racing thread but this is very similar practice.

You have certainly captured the movement in him and the fact that the collar is sharp confirms your panning was spot on.

The head will go up and down and half way between the upper and lower limits of vertical movement it will be at its fastest vertical speed. At the limits of vertical travel it will have no vertical movement and that is the best time to take the shot, theoretically. Easier said than done.

With the dogs head bobbing up and down at varying vertical speeds the shutter speed will determine what movement is frozen and there comes the trade off between getting blurred backgrounds, leg and body motion blur or a better chance of freezing the eye/head.

Grahame

[ajohnw]

I think that's pretty good Donald and suspect you have caught the moment when the body of a dog is relatively still - all paws off the ground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSHb98-C8V4

I think I would try various shutter speeds and continuous but would guess you have already done that. Perhaps less background blur would result in a sharper dog generally.

John
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[Kodiak]

Obviously, the 1/90s was too slow!
True, one aims at a blurred background and this one is too blurred.
The dog is not frozen enough… if one is aiming at freezing the action!

What I like of the shot is a dog running very fast on… water?!?! …really?

[pnodrog]

I think that the shutter speed chosen is fine. It gives a good deal of movement but the collar and eye are reasonably sharp. The eye a bit sharper would have been better but it still makes an interesting and dynamic photograph. I like the vignetting but for me it is just a bit too strong.

[Werner]

Aside from all that (sometimes irrelevant) technical and theoretical considerations:

This is a stunning picture!

[Shadowman]

Donald,

If you've ever tried BIF then you would have encountered the difficulty of trying to focus on the point of interest (head or eyes) and getting an effective looking image. Trying to pan any subject requires practice so we won't fault you on your efforts. With people or animals the moment where momentum slows is at the end of their stride, however the head can still perform sudden jolts or reactions and plus your (the photographer's) timing has to be exact. It might be helpful to post the before and after shot of the posted image or if you have software that will allow you to compare subsequent shots that would work also; it'll help you analyze both the subject's movement and where you missed your cue; if you indeed did miss the moment. From what I can see your timing is perfect, however your pup's head was slightly turned away from you.

Nice effort.

[Brownbear]

Hi Donald,

Just to say that I think this is an incredibly beautiful image with just the right amount of motion blur. Thank you for sharing.

[Mike Buckley]

The difficulty of making this photo reminds me why I usually stick to photographing inanimate objects. Looking forward to seeing the photo that ultimately satisfies your exacting requirements. That one will surely be stunning.

[rpcrowe]

It's fun trying to solve photo dilemmas..

I like this shot a lot. It portrays the speed of a border collie... IMO, shooting a running dog is more difficult than shooting a running horse because of the vertical up and down motion of the dogs head. A horse's head does not bob that much when the horse is running.

I am wondering if up and down camera jiggle might also have contributed. Donald, did you use the IS for this shot. I am wondering if IS-2 might have frozen the vertical bobbing of the camera but, it obviously would not have done anything for the motion of the dog. I often use a monopod for this type of shot which reduces or eliminates up and down camera jiggle,

I also might experiment using aperture priority at f/11 combined with Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) which would have given you three shots at 3-different shutter speeds every time you pressed the shutter button (in this case 1/45. 1/90 and 1/180 second). Certainly two of those shots would not have been at the optimum exposure but, I think that one stop over or under would still be usable. The three shutter speeds would have given you three different degrees of motion freeze...

I am also thinking that selecting a single focus point at approximately where you would want the head of the dog to be located in the frame, and placing that single focus point on the head of the dog when panning might help...

Finally, I copied your image and imported it into CS6. I cropped it at the top about 1/3 down and then used NIK Viveza by putting a selection point which included the dogs face. I then increased the contrast a tad and increased the structure significantly . This gave an impression of somewhat sharper eyes while the crop centered more attention on the head of the dog...

[Donald]

Thank you all for that set of very helpful comments. In particular, thank you Richard for a very comprehensive analysis and consideration of various options ... and for highlighting, albeit unintentionally, my obvious mistake. Image Stabilisation. What an idiot! I am so used to using IS for my landscape work that I never adjusted the settings for this type of shooting. Do you ever feel a complete fool?

Lesson learnt.

[rpcrowe]

It took me a while to get used to Image Stabilization that has two modes 1 and 2... My first lens with IS was the 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS (my first digital lens) and it had only a single IS mode. Then the only choice was turn off the IS for panning. It takes a while for an old dog (or an old guy) to learn new tricks and it took me a while to get used to shifting from Mode 1 to mode 2 when I was panning and then back again for still type shots.

BTW: for those members who are not familiar with the two IS modes. They are available in some Canon IS lenses but, other brands may have similar modes.

Mode 1: provides both horizontal and vertical stabilization. In other words it minimizes sideways and up and down camera jiggle but can cause problems when you are panning because the IS will attempt to over-ride the camera motion.

Mode 2: stabilizes the lens only vertically so you can move the camera side to side as in panning with no competition from the IS.

That was really a great innovation...