Blue Hour Skate - Panning shot

[Manfred M]

I have been trying to get a relatively decent panning shot of skaters this winter. It's the last weekend of Ottawa's annual winter festival, Winterlude, this weekend and I was not happy with my previous efforts.

I headed out to do some shooting at Golden Hour and had hoped that the weekend crowds would have thinned by 16:00 or so. No such luck and the place was absolutely packed so I kept on shooting right into Blue Hour, which lasts about 30 minutes at this time of year.

The problem with doing a panning shot with skaters is that they are moving in two directions, both along the ice and up and down as their body moves while skating. Trying to time the shot so that the camera movement coincided with minimal vertical movement by the skaters was touch. Out of 350 shots I got about 15 acceptable ones. This one is probably one of the best. Ideally in this type of shot, the main figure's face is relatively sharp.





Definitely a cold photo shoot...

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, did you use 3D AF, manual, spot to capture the image? I usually get the most stationary limb (skate or hand) in focus when trying to pan.

[Manfred M]

It was far too busy to do try anything other than focus and recompose, zone focus or focus on the area where I could see they were going to end up at and wait for them to get to the area I wanted to shoot them at.

While this image doesn't show it, there were many thousands of people out on the canal yesterday afternoon. Today is a provincial holiday, Family Day, so most people have the day off and were in no rush to get home. The reason I chose to shoot yesterday and not today is that federally regulated businesses; banks, federal government, etc. do not get this day off. The downtown which has a lot of government offices and employees so this part of Ottawa will be quite busy with traffic, lack of parking and people.

[Shadowman]

It was far too busy to do try anything other than focus and recompose, zone focus or focus on the area where I could see they were going to end up at and wait for them to get to the area I wanted to shoot them at.

While this image doesn't show it, there were many thousands of people out on the canal yesterday afternoon. Today is a provincial holiday, Family Day, so most people have the day off and were in no rush to get home. The reason I chose to shoot yesterday and not today is that federally regulated businesses; banks, federal government, etc. do not get this day off. The downtown which has a lot of government offices and employees so this part of Ottawa will be quite busy with traffic, lack of parking and people.

Thanks for the response, I tried some shots last week using 3D autofocus and while I did get some good shots, usually an unwanted limb was captured by the focus point.

[Manfred M]

Thanks for the response, I tried some shots last week using 3D autofocus and while I did get some good shots, usually an unwanted limb was captured by the focus point.

That is the problem with all of the multi-point focusing modes. The camera's algorithms have to calculate the "best" place to put the focal plane and if it misses, especially at wide apertures, your image will not be focused where it should be.

I use single point focus almost 100% of the time because that lets me define exactly where I want the focus plane to be. In these panning shots I knew that I was dealing with a moving target, so a small aperture with its wide depth of field is rather forgiving,

[mugge]

I think you did ok. 15 shots out of 350 is better than my average at these shots. I much prefer single focus also. I can never understand why so many photographers have their cameras firmly set at multi-point even when the scene is a building. I guess it is 'set and forget.'
Cheers Ole

[rpcrowe]

Maybe this new autofocus firmware upgrade would help folks auto focus their cameras. Or would it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOhuXO9mtU8&t=19s

[mugge]

Maybe this new autofocus firmware upgrade would help folks auto focus their cameras. Or would it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOhuXO9mtU8&t=19s

Richard, you have made my day.