OCA Course: Panning.

With respect to personal choice, it's horses (or bikes) for courses. As a sponsor, sharp images with the highest shutter speeds means their adverts will be readable in Motor Cycle News. As a racing picture, speed is conveyed best with medium shutter speeds, probably the best at 1/200 sec., where the background is blurred, but the bike is sharp apart from the bits that should move - the wheels! The slow shutter pictures are not without merit, representng an "artistic" view of the sport, abstracted to a large degree into smears of colour. It's the middle one for me.

1/5 sec. The bike and background are just a blur, although it is still clear what the picture represents. The bike has moved some 120 feet during the exposure, and the angle of view changed by about 45 degrees. Ernst Haas's bullfight pictures look like this.


1/13 sec. The bike is distorted front and back by the changing angle of view presented to the camera during the long exposure, although the middle is still clear. Following the action accurately for 1/13th of a second was difficult, and a number of shots at this speed were too blurred.


1/20 sec. There is still a good impression of the bike at speed, without too much loss of definition.


1/40 sec. Detail of the bike is lost due to it's movement in relation to the camera, but a dramatic image of extreme speed is conveyed.


1/80 sec. There is the beginnings of difficulty following the bike with the camera, and overall blurring is developing.


1/200 sec. The bike appears to be going faster than on the previous image.


1/400 sec. An obvious impression of speed now.


1/640 sec. There is definite movement on the background and the bike wheels, conveying an impression of movement.


1/1000 sec. The background is just beginning to blur, but still doesn't really give the impression of speed. The bike is still sharp, although there is just perceptible movement on the front wheel.


1/2500 sec. Very little difference from the previous image.


1/3200 sec. Everything is sharp, and there is no perception of movement. The bike could be a cardboard cut-out, but the riders sponsors would like it because you can read the adverts on the bike. The crowd are already looking for the next rider to appear.


Panning: Nothing much moves in Scarborough other than people and traffic (and sometimes that doesn't!). I tried this with cars on the Marine Drive, but the images were boring, so I intentionally delayed this exercise until the motor-bike races on Olivers Mount. This is a twisty, hilly circuit on the edge of town, a closed public road, which holds three or four race events per year. There are some good positions for photography, as you can get close to the trackside. These images were taken from a fixed position at the "esses". Lap average speed is 80mph, so the bikes are doing this sort of rate at this point. I used a Canon EOS 1D Mk 111 on Tv mode, with a 100-400 zoom at 100mm. It was sunny weather, so I had to use 100 ISO and a polariser to get the longer exposure times in the sequence. It was great fun, and I took lots of other images on the day.