Flat and blury photos

Chriscooke

Chriscooke

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Chris
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This weekend saw my first attempt at taking shots of cars on track and panning. I seem to of failed badly though with all of the images being out of focus and really flat :(

I panned following the same point on the car (normally the wing mirror) and continued panning after I had taken the shot. I was using an aperture in the mid 20's and a shutter speed of around 200.

Here is an example of an average shot


IMG_0778 by cookie200sx, on Flickr

Anyone know what i'm doing so wrong?
 
looks like the shutter speed was too fast and youve effectivley stopped the action, hence no panning blur behind the car, the aperture perhaps a tad too small also, hence the dof

Les :thumbs:
 
Ah ok I always thought that slower shutter speed increased the chance of blurring the shot but I can see what you are saying tbh. I think I need to have a play :D
 
You have a very odd combination of settings IMHO. 1/200 at f/32 and 1250 ISO is, I think, quite unusual.

Your shutter speed is not too much the issue, although I think a slower speed would be better, combined with more skill/practice, but f/32 is pretty crazy. You absolutely do not need anything like f/32 for DOF, and it will cause horrendous diffraction softening at the pixel level. As a consequence of the crazy aperture value your ISO is also through the roof (relative to where it could be and ought to be).

Just to put things on a more even keel, if you'd been at f/8 (4 stops brighter) you could have shot at 80 ISO (4 stops less gain, but not available, of course) so perhaps f/9 and 100 ISO. That would have done great things to improve IQ on various fronts - sharper, less noise, less NR for the noise = sharper still.

From that point you could then juggle your shutter speed and make small adjustments to aperture to compensate. e.g. 1/100 and f/13 to maintain the same overall exposure. Unfortunately, based on the example shown I don't think your panning talents were quite up to it on this shot, so 1/100 would hardly help, but practice, practice, practice will get you there. I don't find it easy and each time I face a panning situation, which is rare for me, it takes a good while for me to get my eye in.

Here's an example at 1/80, f/7.1, 100 ISO, after a few practice runs....

20110424_185356_4214_LR-2.jpg



EDIT : Just seen your reply. Yes, a high shutter speed helps reduce shake, but it also destroys the illusion of speed, because it freezes the motion in the frame. That includes the rushing background as you pan with the vehicle and also the blur of the spokes. A slower shutter speed enhances the sense of motion, but makes the shot more challenging to pull off. That's where the practice and skill play an important part (maybe luck too for some of us :D).
 
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1/200 is fine for a car on a straight, the faster the car is going the more blur you will get at a certain shutter speed. It's only really a problem if you freeze the wheel motion as it makes cars look odd but there's clearly motion in the wheels on your shot.
The issue you have here is an inaccurate panning motion and reducing the shutter speed more will only make that worse.

When you have a shot like this you can diagnose the problem by looking more closely at the blurring in the image.
If you look at the white lines either side of the road and the horizontal panel joins on the car (just in front of the front wheel arch and where the bonnet ends at the front of the car) there is little to no blur above and below them, this suggests you tracked the direction of movement reasonably accurately with your "swing".
If you compare that to the vertical lines in the part of the image that should be sharp (i.e. the car) such as the text on the numberplate, the gaps around the door and the pillars either side of the windscreen you can see these are blurred which suggests the speed of your swing wasn't accurate for the speed of the car.

I think the best thing to do next time is try to get more side-on to the car (as that'll make getting sharp shots easier) and keep your shutter speed at around what you were already trying. Try to be somewhere that the car is doing a reasonably constant speed (tracking cars into a breaking zone will be harder than at the mid-point of a straight). I would try switching the IS switch on your lens to off too, I've read of IS interfering with panning on lenses that aren't designed to detect panning. My telephoto lens doesn't have IS so I haven't tried IS panning but if it does cause problems then the image you've posted is exactly what I'd expect to see.
 
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Thanks for taking the time to reply. Both responses have given me plenty to think about. I'm a complete novice so I expected the learning curve to be quite steep.

These shots were in to a breaking zone with the track coming in at an angle towards me. I don't think my positioning was helping me any.

I need to find somewhere to practice I think.
 
Chriscooke said:
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Both responses have given me plenty to think about. I'm a complete novice so I expected the learning curve to be quite steep.

These shots were in to a breaking zone with the track coming in at an angle towards me. I don't think my positioning was helping me any.

I need to find somewhere to practice I think.
Click to expand...

As others have said, you just need to practice more.

But to add about the flatness, that's what you get in crap light I'm afraid - a little boost would improve it (a little) but you have to get lucky with pockets of half decent light with weather like we're having atm.

And if you think it gets difficult panning cars coming into braking zones, think about rally cars on corners or drift cars, where there's 2 or 3 planes of movement and you can only pan with one - you have to accept it'll not all be sharp - and choose the important bit - so just rely on dumb luck really.
 
Ha ha I can imagine rally cars etc being some what of a challenge. I think I'll stick to the very basics for now. Cheers for your input though :)
 
There was some good advise given here. (Have no idea how you came up with those settings lol) but for future reference start here and ask these guys. They have a world of experience and are always very helpful. I was going to shoot my first fireworks and had no idea how to set for it so I ask and they put me spot on. It would had been a mess without their advice.
 
Hi Chris

As others have said, practice, practice, practice...

Don't forget (if you get chance) review your shots in camera and make sure you are getting the image / effect you are after...

If you look at your 2nd shot, the wheels are showing motion, so it's a much better shot than your 1st as it gives a sense of speed.

Here's one I took at Oulton Park, which took me several attempts to get, I was playing with the shutter speed and seeing how low I could go - plenty of car out of focus, bits being cropped out, but I was very happy with the shot I managed to get - but only by reviewing my shots did I know if it was working or not...

Seem to remember this is about 1/60

tn1.jpg



Don't forget, it doesn't cost anything to try and try again, but don't go firing of 100's in case you get one...
 
As a rough guideline, when panning, try a shutter speed of 1 / speed in MPH and work from there depending on skill and desired effect. You might choose to go faster, due to shake, or even slower, for extra emphasis of speed.

If you're struggling with shake and panning accuracy then try shutter speed = 1 / speed in km/h, again, just as a convenient guideline. Nothing is cast in stone.
 
Cheers guys. The tip above sounds like it should be pretty easy remember when out in the field also :)

I have no idea how I ended up with these settings either btw :D
 
The BMW estate one looks pretty much nailed to me in terms of the panning. There's a touch of blur in a couple of places but you're always going to get some unless you're perfectly side on to a car doing a constant speed on a perfectly flat surface so that's nothing to worry about. You can certainly afford to "lose" more of the car to blur before it starts looking odd.
It looks a little bit underexposed though and the white balance looks a tiny bit pink-tinted and a little bit too cool - fixing that will make it look a bit better.

andyred said:
If you look at your 2nd shot, the wheels are showing motion, so it's a much better shot than your 1st as it gives a sense of speed.
Click to expand...
The first shot has motion in the wheels, it's more visible if you look at a bigger version of it (click the image). I think it just gets lost on the smaller version you can see in the thread partly because smaller versions look sharper in general but also because the whole car is a bit blurry so there's nothing sharp to compare the wheels to.
 
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