Family in their garbage trike (not truck) - a lucky attempt at panning

[philmarion]

One morning during my trip to Myanmar I decided to practice my panning technique on a slew of interesting moving vehicles. I set up on a busy street opposite some signage that I thought would blur interestingly. For a good 30 minutes I took photos of various cars, trucks and motorbikes. My panning skills are terrible. Of my 100 attempts I'd say maybe 3 were not deleted. Luckily one of them was a keeper. A family of 4 (including a toddler) sped by in their garbage trike off to collect refuse for the day.

Garbage pickup family - Mandalay, Myanmar by Phil Marion, on Flickr

 

[gramps]

Very well caught, well worth the effort, (we don't know how well off we are do we!).

 

[Byker28i]

Excellent image and good story to go with it. Always find it strange how some parts of the image can be pin sharp, then odd bits not.

 

[GeeJay57]

Excellent image and good story to go with it. Always find it strange how some parts of the image can be pin sharp, then odd bits not.

It is a bit strange. I guess it's due to the fact that the camera/film plane is rotating with respect to the subject which is traveling at a tangent.

Nice image though and for sure tells a story.

 

[Byker28i]

Just strange as I've had the same when panning old sports cars. Driver nicely in focus and the front/back of the car slightly out. Must be something to do with the speed of panning changing.

 

[Kodiak Qc]

Always find it strange how some parts of the image can be pin sharp, then odd bits not.

I guess it's due to the fact that the camera/film plane is rotating with respect to the subject which is traveling at a tangent.

Must be something to do with the speed of panning changing.

I think not in this case, Biker & Glenn!

The trike IS almost perfectly parallel to the film plane and, when
taken at higher SS, a curve becomes a point in its trajectory. To
have a higher SS, a fairly large aperture was chosen with focus
on the boy, woman and blue side panel.

Since the subject is followed from right to left, — and the panning
was well done! — its horizontal movement is reduced to +/- zero.
The driver is OoF because of the shallow DoF.

OTH, all vertical or circular movements will be captured at full
amplitude since they are not cancelled out by the panning action;
the spinning wheels are blurred as expected and so is the suspen-
ded front of the trike that displays more blur than the back wheel.
What ever movement affectting the front wheel, it will be blurred
more than the back wheel that is the centre of the pivoting action.

Nothing strange here in this cool take, Phil!

ADDENDUM

Driver nicely in focus and the front/back of the car slightly out.

That is because, in the car situation, both ends are equally suspen-
ded and the driver is the pivoting point. This trike has waaaay less
suspension at the back wheel.

 

[GeeJay57]

At high shutter speed I'd agree.

This was shot at 1/13s @ f/7.1 with a 70mm lens.

I would consider that a low shutter speed, with reasonable f-stop and DOF. Granted some of the blur at the front is vertical (wheel gone over a bump), but there will definitely be some circular error going on. IMHO of course, YMMV.

 

[Kodiak Qc]

This was shot at 1/13s @ f/7.1 with a 70mm lens.

Didn't know that! 1/13s? Then this was a lucky shot.
ƒ7.1 @ 70 mm… must have been right across the road
i.e. pretty close for such shallow DoF.

My panning skills are terrible. Of my 100 attempts I'd say maybe 3 were not deleted.

This will not improve on your panning skill but increase your
keepers rate: try shooting wider opened, ISO 400+ so to get
higher SS. Your actual setting is working against you and you
must rely too much on luck!