Exercise five: Panning with different shutter speeds

It's fair to say I found this exercise the most difficult yet. So much so, I resorted to using the camera's continuous function and shot hundreds of images. Very scattergun.

There were just so many variables - all resulting in many more throwers than keepers:

• Subjects moving at different speeds
• Parts of the course running slower/faster than others
• Differing angles of descent
• Having to pan right/left and left/right

So although it wasn't a technique that I felt natural with (nor one that I liked) I did get useful shots raging from shutter speeds of 1/13th of a second upwards. Here's a selection in ascending order and other can be found on my Flickr photostream.

35mm, 1/13 secs at f/29, ISO 100

55mm, 1/15 secs at f/36, ISO 100

55mm, 1/20 secs at f/18, ISO 100

40mm, 1/60 secs at f/8, ISO 100

It's difficult to make a comparison between these image in terms of background blur as, with the exception of the first two examples, the subjects are travelling at different speeds. One thing that is immediately noticeable is that there is progressively more clarity in each image - in the last image the head and torso are static, with the riders legs generating blur as they're moving even quicker. This may be due to my inexperience with this technique.

Each, of course, gives a strong sense of movement but in images one and two it's heavily exaggerated despite the riders heading downhill. This isn't a criticism; after all, it's a useful feature of this technique. 

A strength of each image is the composition, with all riders being at the edge of the frame and leaving space in the direction that they are travelling.

It's certainly a technique that I need to practice more because whether outdoor sports is a genre I wish to pursue or not it is likely to be something that I do more of - on this occasion shooting in continuous mode masked a lot of poor technique.