Panning and wide aperture lenses

TristanP

I rented a 400/5.6 for some motorcycle racing at VIR back in March. That experience brought me to this question:

When using a long telephoto (like the 400/2.8, 500/4, etc) and shooting panning shots (say 1/125 sec) close to or at wide open aperture, how do you not blow out the scene on a sunny day? Seems like you'd need an ND filter to keep too much light from coming in.

mercphoto

TristanP wrote:

I rented a 400/5.6 for some motorcycle racing at VIR back in March. That experience brought me to this question:

When using a long telephoto (like the 400/2.8, 500/4, etc) and shooting panning shots (say 1/125 sec) close to or at wide open aperture, how do you not blow out the scene on a sunny day? Seems like you'd need an ND filter to keep too much light from coming in.

Can I ask why you want to shoot at 1/125 and pan and also use the lens wide open? That is your problem. You will probably be around f/8 to f/13 depending on available light.

If you are trying to use the lens wide open to separate the rider from the background you are going about it the wrong way. Panning will do that for you -- the background will blur in the direction of lens travel, thus providing the separation. But the large depth of field you'll get at f/11 will also help you with the panning shot. Because any horizontal edges will still be in focus, and thus crisp, and add to the motion blurring effect.

A panned shot with a shallow depth of field (i.e. wide open) actually doesn't end up looking all that good.

mercphoto

Shot at 1/125 a second at 200mm with f/16. Notice how sharp the horizontal edges are and how blurred the vertical edges are. You cannot get this effect with a lens wide open.

mercphoto

mercphoto wrote:

Shot at 1/125 a second at 200mm with f/16. Notice how sharp the horizontal edges are and how blurred the vertical edges are. You cannot get this effect with a lens wide open.

Can someone at Smugmug or Dgrin explain to me why my photo is not appearing in my post? I still have the thumbnail in the gallery but it appears the larger sizes have vanished.

LiquidOps

mercphoto wrote:

Can someone at Smugmug or Dgrin explain to me why my photo is not appearing in my post? I still have the thumbnail in the gallery but it appears the larger sizes have vanished.

From what I can tell, you need to turn on External Links

Hope that helps,

Steven

mercphoto

LiquidOps wrote:

From what I can tell, you need to turn on External Links

Is on, but as I noted, the gallery it resides in has a thumbnail but no longer has a medium or large image, which is really, really odd.

LiquidOps

mercphoto wrote:

Is on, but as I noted, the gallery it resides in has a thumbnail but no longer has a medium or large image, which is really, really odd.

hmmm... not sure on that one...

I checked the properties of your image (the one you tried to link) and did a c/p into my browser and I can see the image. #8 cart with an "Intrepid" sticker on the side.

not sure what's goin on behind the scenes... good luck though

TristanP

mercphoto wrote:

Can I ask why you want to shoot at 1/125 and pan and also use the lens wide open? That is your problem. You will probably be around f/8 to f/13 depending on available light.

That's why I was wondering. I know based on experience that shooting in Tv at 1/300-1/125 gets me an f stop between 8 and 11-ish depending on conditions I was seeing. I didn't realize that you wouldn't be panning wide open. That solves it. I can see your pic just fine, BTW. Thanks for the quick feedback.

wxwax

mercphoto wrote:

Shot at 1/125 a second at 200mm with f/16. Notice how sharp the horizontal edges are and how blurred the vertical edges are. You cannot get this effect with a lens wide open.

Excellent post, I did not know that.

Thanks!