Panning@SIC Track Day

I was so busy since my last post in this blog. I am not sure what I was doing but it was kinda hard for me finding a free time to write about my last photo outing - panning at Sepang International Circuit on last weekend. Oh, Happy Chinese New Year for those who celebrate it today.

Some of us might wonder why sport photographers on TV usually using big white lenses to capture the moment while my small Sony 70-300G and Sony 16-80CZ did the job pretty well:









Some might prefer to have big lenses which easily cost you RM20k while some others might settle with mid-level lens. If I have the budget, I would go to those white lenses but owning small 70-300G does not limit me to get my desired pictures. As I said in earlier post, you will learn to overcome the limitations of your gear.

From my personal experience using whitey and my Sony 70-300G, the only difference I can tell is the time taken to lock focus point. My Sony 70-300G took me about 3-5 seconds to lock the subject while whitey would take less than a second. No doubt whitey will make your life much easier. Other than that is its constant aperture really helps especially for indoor shooting. If you have a f2.8 lens, put on M mode and try to shoot with shutter speed at 1/60 and ISO at 200. Compare the result with the same settings except for aperture, move to f5.6 - you will see how much you lost the important light.

Back to the panning shot I took on my last trip to SIC, here are the settings:
Shutter Speed: 1/200
Aperture: f11
ISO: 320
WB: Daylight
File type: JPEG

The settings above are subjective, depends on the weather of the day. Credit to a man (photographer) I know at the track - shit, I didn't ask for his name and contact. He shared his Canon 50D settings for track panning but I altered to as above. He was using faster ss but I slow down the ss to get extra blur background.

I hope you are clear about the settings. So what else, go and practice panning!

As usual, if you like my blog, please do share with your friends.

For more collection of Panning@SIC, please visit my gallery at http://www.afhamaziz.com/flickr. For any reasons, I can be reached at admin@afhamaziz.com.

- Afham Aziz