nice! quick question as im useless with cameras..whats panning?

 

blurred background with subject in focus ie:the cars in most of these photos.

 

You follow the car or runner or whatever is moving and take the shot. That's what blurs the background.

 

Nice pics.

 

thanks!

we really need to get the photo contest thing going again.

 

You suffer the same problem I do... a dirty sensor... albeit yours is not as bad as mine. If you look at the blurred portions there are dark spots. For instance, I can tell you cropped the first two pictures differently by the location of the spots. In the first pic, directly above the center/top of the car you will see two spots. In the second picture, those two spots are in a different location ( a little further to the right ).

You should see some of my panned shots.... I haven't even posted them up because the spots are horrendous.

Makes me wonder if the pros don't have to touch up every panning shot, unless they are doing something I don't know about (other than cleaning the sensor). I wish I knew.

Here are some I had to touch up:

 

I clean my sensor whenever dust shows at ~ f/11 or larger

 

Is that the only trick... just cleaning the sensor? What do you use to clean it with?

 

+1

I saw the spots but had no idea what it was. Thank you for the help!!

See I like the clarity of your subject matter with your panning. However it looks like you may have been using a slightly faster shutter speed then I was "attempting" to use. The group I was doing the shoot for wanted the background to be virtually unrecognizable. I played around with shutter literally all day. Only a few of them did I even get close to what I thought was acceptable.

 

I use two methods depending on how dirty it is. The first method is with a brush, very simple and quick. For anything the brush can't remove, I'll use a wet solution. There are a wide range of products for sensor cleaning.

The blur of the background is relative to the vehicle speed. If you're shooting faster cars, you can get by with a faster shutter speed. If you're shooting slower cars, then you need a slower shutter speed to capture the blur. The general rule of thumb is shutter speed 1/vehicle speed. For Solo II autocross, 1/60 works well. For cars going down the straight away at NJMP, 1/150-1/200 works well.