Motorsport Panning: Advanced Guide

With the Beginners Guide complete here is a bunch of ‘other stuff’ that would have been too overwhelming for that guide, but will hopefully give you some food for thought if you’re nailing 1/50 pans for breakfast and want to take things further.

NEW: Advanced Panning Cheat Sheet, a load of this stuff in an easy to view offline PDF…

Cheat Sheet

Nikon Z5, Nikkor 24-200mm, 24mm, 0.5s, f6.3, ISO 100, ND1000, Manual Focus (Castle Combe Circuit).

Super-Slow Shutter Speeds

How do you do this? Practice, practice, practice. Then practice some more. There are no shortcuts here, the best AF system in the world won’t make slow panning any easier, in fact pretty much the only tool that may help is a monopod. I personally find them too restrictive, but they do drastically reduce one of the error points when slow panning (up and down movement) so they are worth a try. Monopod or not, be prepared for a whole load of binned shots and a plenty which are frustratingly close to being perfect. Oh, and clean your sensor, you will thank me for it (slow shutter speeds = small apertures = every little bit of dust on your sensor showing up in your images).

Panasonic S5, Sigma 100-400mm, 134mm, 1/20, f14, ISO 100 (Goodwood 78MM). As discussed in the Beginners Guide, unless the subject is travelling parallel to you you’ll say goodbye to an entirely sharp subject even if you nail the pan. That doesn’t mean there is no fun to be had experimenting with that effect though.

The technique for a 1/20 pan is no different to a 1/200 pan really, you just have 1/180th of a second more to mess it up :) If there is anything you can do to stabilise yourself - do it. Flat feet pointing forward, hold your breath, dig your elbows into your side, firmly hold the lens at the far end…whatever it takes and whatever you find yourself most comfortable doing.

Once you’ve given it a go you’ll quickly discover a fairly major issue with using very slow shutter speeds in daylight. The issue? Daylight. Unless it’s a very heavily overcast day you’ll probably find your camera is bouncing off the aperture limit of your lens and still returning overexposed shots. The only way around this (apart from waiting for an overcast day) is to start using ND filters. Neutral Density filters block the amount of light entering the lens, meaning you can bring shutter speeds down further without over-exposing your images. Here are a couple of typical ND filter strengths along with the f-stop reduction they give you…

ND8 = 3 stops
ND16 = 4 stops
ND32 = 5 stops
ND64 = 6 stops
ND1000 = 10 stops

If for example you’re lens tops out at f32 and you’re hitting that limit with a 1/30 pan, an ND16 will reduce that by 4 stops all the way down to f8, which in turn means you have plenty of headroom left to play around with in terms of bringing the shutter speed down further. An ND16 is likely to be all you ever need unless you’ve got to the point where you want to try 1 second pans!

Nikon Z5, Nikkor 24-200mm, 38mm, 1/5, f5.6, ISO 200, ND1000, Manual Focus (Castle Combe Circuit). I only had an ND1000 at my disposal, which made things rather tricky. As you can see, even at 1/5, I was able to shoot wide open (f5.6). Something like an ND32 would have been more than enough for this.

So ND filters are great, right? Yes, but intentionally making everything darker does not make for a happy camera. Optical viewfinders found in DSLRs show you exactly what your lens ‘sees’, and you’ve just put a piece of dark glass in front of it, so say goodbye to a nice bright view (or much in the way of a view at all if using a 10 stopper!) Thankfully most mirrorless cameras will ‘gain up’ the electronic viewfinder (but things can get laggy or very grainy) so they have an advantage here. The biggest issue, however, is that AF systems thrive on light (and again, you’ve just removed a load of that) so that’ll struggle too. Which brings me onto my next subject…

Manual Focus (which isn’t scary)

Firstly, it’s dead easy. Secondly, if you have a mirrorless camera with focus peaking, it’s easier still. Flick that switch/dial over to MF and manually focus the lens onto the track (I typically aim for the white line on the outer edge of the track) roughly where you want to be shooting, if you have focus peaking you’ll get a colour band appear on the track so you know you’re in the right spot. The camera now has significantly less work to do, it’s just there waiting for you to hit the shutter button. No delays, no hunting, just firing frames off the moment you’re ready.

Nikon Z5, Sigma 100-400mm, 400mm, 1/25, f9, ISO 100, Manual Focus (Silverstone Circuit). The light was getting tricky at this point, I was shooting through a fence and headlight beams were bouncing off of the metal and causing all sorts of AF issues. Manual focus removed all that stress.

If you’re shooting with slow shutter speeds you will probably find your aperture is up around f12 and beyond (unless it’s night time) so the band of focus is going to be fairly significant, i.e. as long as you’ve focused somewhere on the track, it’s unlikely to matter if the subject is right on the nearest edge of the track or right at the back, or if you’re shooting quite a bit before or after the particular section of track you focused on.

That’s it! It’s makes using ND filters so much easier, and it’ll make the next two areas of this guide much easier too…

Shooting Through Things

The hardest thing about shooting through things is that you’re shooting through things. Not only is your own visibility reduced, but the camera will wonder what the hell you’re up, it’ll more than likely throw a hissy fit when trying to track a fast moving object that keeps disappearing from view. It’s worth mentioning that there are some clever AF systems (I’ve tried the Fuji one) that try and manage this, quite successfully too. Basically you tell the camera how much you want it to cling on to the object you’ve started tracking, it’ll then keep the AF at roughly the same distance when the subject disappears from view, giving it a fighting chance of locking back on as soon as it reappears. Without these systems, a basic AF system will probably try and throw focus back to whatever you’re shooting through.

Fuji X-T2, Fuji 100-400mm, 100mm, 1/20, f18, ISO 100 (Goodwood Festival of Speed)

Here’s the thing…if you’re panning vehicles on a section of track even vaguely parallel to you, all the clever AF system is doing is basically locking focus at a particular distance and being told not to deviate from that if a much closer subject suddenly appears in frame. What else does that? Yep, manual focus! Just focus on the track roughly where you want to be capturing your frames and crack on.

In terms of technique, it really is no different to basic panning, you just can’t always see the subject. If that sounds difficult, well, it is! To give yourself a fighting chance, try and pick a location where you can at least track the subject through the viewfinder before the scene gets busy, you then have a reference point for the speed of your pan. Continue to pan smoothly when the subject disappears from frame, then fire away. I’m typically not a big advocate of high frame rate burst shooting, but it does make sense in this situation as it’ll drastically increase your odds of nailing the framing that you’ve visualised. 5fps has always been plenty for me so don’t feel you need a monster 20fps mirrorless camera for this.

One of the best bits about realising that panning can ‘cut’ through things is that suddenly, areas with fences in the way don’t necessarily have to be off-limits any more. To minimise the fence messing up your shot, get as close as you can to it, shoot parallel to the fence, shoot as wide open as you can and find the least ‘messy’ area of fence you can (i.e. away from thick support beams or cables). You will lose shots if an annoying bit of fence appears right across your subject (and it’s incredibly frustrating when you’ve nailed the pan!) but when it works it can work perfectly…

Nikon Z5, Sigma 100-400mm, 220mm, 1/30, f8, ISO 100, Manual Focus (Silverstone Circuit). Yes, this was shot through a fence (it’s Silverstone, of course it was!) but you’d never know it.

When I first started playing around with this technique I was fairly cautious with what I was trying to shoot through, but as I’ve experimented more and more I’ve been amazed at the density of ‘stuff’ you can shoot through and still get usable shots from. For this shot I was crouched down behind a lady sat in a deckchair (yes, she probably wondered what the hell I was doing) and had my lens a few inches from the back of her bobble hat…

Panasonic S5, Sigma 100-400mm, 100mm, 1/10, f18, ISO 100 (Goodwood 78MM). The blur around the car is the bobble hat :)

Night Shooting

There is no easy way of getting around this one, night shooting is tough. Without banging on about manual focus too much…use manual focus if you’re struggling! Unless you’re using the latest and greatest professional sports camera or you’re lucky enough to have a fair bit of ambient light to work with, any AF system is going to struggle with fast moving objects at night. In my experience headlights also do a pretty good job of confusing many AF systems too.

Nikon Z5, Sigma 100-400mm, 400mm, 1/30, f7.1, ISO 400, Manual Focus (Silverstone Circuit)

My top tip? Shoot as much as you possibly can for the hour after sunset (or hour before sunrise) whilst there is still some light knocking around, if you’re really, really lucky you may even get a sunrise or sunset to play with. Once night falls proper, head to a part of the circuit that is lit (such as adjacent to the pit garages) if you can, any ambient light is your friend at that point.

Fuji X-T10, Fuji 100-400mm, 400mm, 1/15, f14, ISO 200 (Silverstone Circuit). An actual sunset! In reality this was a tiny slither of sunset amongst thick cloud, a slow pan has stretched it out nicely to fill much of the frame. There aren’t many events in the UK that run into the night so the chances of catching a sunset are slim to say the least, this one was shot in 2016 and I’ve not come close to anything like this since!

Exposure

I love a bit of under-exposure, I’ll often dial in -1 or -2 on the exposure compensation dial and shoot all day with it left like that. Why? Firstly, pretty much all modern cameras are exceptional when it comes to increasing exposure in post-processing with virtually no loss of quality, but clawing back a seriously overexposed image is difficult if not impossible. Pretty much every single image you see in these guides was shot underexposed and then brought back up a little in Lightroom.

Panasonic S5, Sigma 100-400mm, 400mm, 1/250, f6.3, ISO 400 (Castle Combe Circuit). As shot this was a set of bright headlights with a fairly dark car behind it! Bringing up the exposure and shadows in Lightroom (and pulling the highlights back down) has retained fine detail such as the rain and spray, which would likely have been lost entirely if shot over-exposed.

I’m far from being an expert in Lightroom (and Photoshop would probably bring me to tears), but over the past few years I have developed my own preset which works really well with how I shoot and expose my images in camera. Nothing fancy, just the exposure/shadow/highlights sliders in the right place. Applying that to all my images on import typically means only minor adjustments are required after, I can typically process an event (average 2-3000 photos) and have them on Flickr within 3 hours of getting home.

Framing / Composition

As I mentioned in the Beginners Guide, whilst this guide is necessarily technical, never lose sight of the creative side of photography. You may be focusing on nailing a 1/20 pan, but always consider composition and light first. I shoot everything from public positions so options can feel limited sometimes, but that’s where keeping on the move comes in. Go where others aren’t, don’t be afraid to try things. I’ve never had an issue tilting the camera (in fact I do more often than not) to inject a bit of interest or to cleverly crop out unsightly scenery or track furniture.

Panasonic S5, Sigma 100-400mm, 100mm, 1/20, f22, ISO 100 (Castle Combe Circuit). With drifting I typically under-expose by 2 to 3 stops, this allows me to bring the subject and smoke back up whilst retaining definition in both. As for the black and white? Well sometimes it just works…

I also have no problem whatsoever cropping an image in post to create an entirely different composition. When panning it’s not always easy to nail a frame as perfectly as you’d like…so just crop it.

Have Fun!

By far the most important thing, enjoy it! Try silly things, then try even sillier things. Do the opposite of what all the other photographers around you are doing, head right up into the back of the stands, shoot really, really wide. Shoot through a gap in the armco, try 1 second pans just to experience how absurdly difficult it is!