One of my favorite techniques to bring a car to life is the panning shot. As seen above.

The point of this kind of picture is to really bring the speed to life.

Look at the picture above. You can really feel the speed of the car.

Now look at this one:

It seems stationary, right? The truth is that it is going quite fast as well.

The secret behind the first shot is the effect of low shutter speed and panning.

It’s one of the techniques that requires a lot of practice, and also that you standing correctly.

First of all. Make sure you are standing on solid ground. Sounds ridiculous, but it is true. Standing in a slippery incline will make you tense up to keep you from falling.

Which brings us to the second point. How you are standing.

Have you ever seen the shooting stance of a Navy SEAL? They are all doing pretty much the same thing. Sure footing. About shoulder width facing the target with the entire body. Arms in tight, and shoulders relaxed. They do this so that they can keep the guns up for a long time while shooting precise. While beeing able to pan left and right without moving your feet.

That is exactly what you want too. It really doesn’t matter if you shoot with a rifle or a camera. It really is the same.

When it comes to camera settings I usually go for the lowest ISO I can and shutter priority. As for the shutter speed it depends on how fast you need to pan, and how steady you are. I usually try to keep between 1/120 and 1/60 with my 70-200 handheld. And I always shoot on continous instead of single shot. Just because you’ll never get the shot if you only take one picture.

It is also a good idea to assign autofocus to a separate button to keep you from using the focus by accident and ruining the shots.

The picture in the beginning of this article was shot with my 7D with a 70-200 F2.8 at 1/100 ISO 200 f14. Focal length 75mm.

As for focus point, I usually set the focus to the closest edge of the track. Since I use a deep field of depth that ensures that the whole car will be in focus.

As for aiming. I tend to aim for the race number on the door. I will pick up the car about 45 degrees from my centerline and keep shooting it til it is 45 degrees to the other side, matching the speed of the car exactly. That maximizes the chance of getting that one really clear shot.

When it comes to composition. Try to have something in the picture that will get really dragged out. This wil enhance the sence of speed in the picture. Spectators or posts are good things to use for this. As you can see in the bottom left corner of my shot.

Also, I try to have something that will make some nice lines through the pictures like the guardrailes or curbes.

And lastly. This is something that takes a lot of practice to get right. One way of practicing is to stand next to a normal road and try following the cars. Once you get it at low speed, try a highway.

If you want to go right to the track action. Start of right after a turn, where the cars aren’t going that fast and then move your way down the straight.

And that is pretty much how you shoot cars at speed.

Please feel free to comment and ask questions. And have fun with the technique!

This post was supposed to be a plan on what events I was going to shoot through the year. And that could have happened if the schedules of the racingseries and trackdays were actually out.

As it is, though. Not many of them are out yet, so it seems I have to wait a bit longer to plan my year. In the mean time. Here’s some more shots from years past.

That’s it for this time. Feel free to leave a comment below. This page is nothing without feedback.