AS and panning?

Hi

A dumb question here

I was at an airshow last weekend and was using my telephotos to shoot the various planes whilst they were flying

I was panning the aircraft whilst shooting (I wasn't looking for a panning effect in the image - just tracking them until the right moment arrived) and I suddenly wondered whether I should have the AS on or off whilst doing this...

Ideally I would liked to have slower shutter-speeds to allow some motion-blur on the propellers of the older planes, but in the end the light was good and I was uncertain so I switched-off AS and ran with high speeds and consequently sharp but 'improbably-suspended' subjects

Any advice about AS and intentional camera movement?

Thanks!

I haven't intentionally tested the AS function in my panned shots(for racing) but I never turned it off either. I think once I did try without it and it seems to be less focused than others. But for panned racing shot success rate is not exactly 100%. So how much is AS and how much is technique I can't say.
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Maxxum 7
KM 5D
10 Lenses from 20mm-300mm
5600 HSD

you want to pan the camera with AS on.. you dont want to blur the airplane thus you try to pan with it .. with the slow shutter the props will blur but the AS should help you keep the body of the plane sharp. same with shooting nascar... pan with the pack using slow shutter... otherwise the pack looks like its parked on the super speedway.
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Regards
Bill
USA



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http://evil-twin.smugmug.com/

especially if there is a context, jet plane against blue sky is not so much a problem, but definitely prop plane....

Cars on the ground too...



1/40s panned shot with 20/2.8

again though I'd have test this out if AS actually helps in this situation, in the manual I believe they suggest you turn it off...
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Maxxum 7
KM 5D
10 Lenses from 20mm-300mm
5600 HSD

parallaxproblem said:

Any advice about AS and intentional camera movement?

Click to expand...

If you search the forums, you'll find that most "experts" say panning is not possible because support for panning is not mentioned in the specifications and there's no "disable horizontal stabilization" switch either.

However, if you dig deeper, you'll also find out these "experts" haven't ever tried panning with AS. In fact, most of them have never owned a camera equipped with AS/SSS.

I don't think AS has any problems with panning. Nor there is a need for a special panning mode. The answer is really simple: AS does not care about steady movement. I suspect it can't even measure steady movement (the key word here is "angular accelerometers" mentioned in the original technical documents published by Minolta).

In order to really see what AS does during panning we would need a video camera equipped with AS.

...but wait, we DO have cameras capable of recording video: the digicams (A1, A2 and A200 + plus a couple of superzooms). The operating principle of the same, despite of the smaller CCD, but these cameras offer both live view and video recording.

I've owned the first camera equipped with in-body stabilation, Dimage A1. Of course, testing AS was near the top of my to do list. Here's what I did: I zoomed to max. focal lenght (200 mm equivalent) + activated the viewfinder magnification mode (meant to help manual focusing) Together these resulted in a field of view corresponding to a film SLR equipped with a 660 mm focal lenght (provided my memory does not fail...). The viewfinder was quite jyrky, but I quickly noticed there were two "shake components"; my breathing which caused slow up and down movement and my pulse which caused very rapid and violent shake/blurring of the VF image. Of cource, I was able to get rid of the first "shake component" by holding my breath, but the "little earthquakes" remaind. I tried to hold the camera differently, but nothing helped. Apparently, the blood pressure variations in my fingertips were enough to shake the camera due to it's light weight.

Switching the AS on had a dramatic effect. The "earthguakes" disappeared almost totally, but the slow swaying caused by my breathing remained. This tells me AS does not try to compensate (probably it can't even detect) very slow or steady movements. Consequently, it shouldn't try to stop (steady) panning.

AS also improve the quality of video clips tremendously. Panning works fine - OK, if I first hold the camera still and then, abruptly,start panning, the image in the viewfinder remains still for a split second, then jumps in order to catch up. I guess the same thing happens with stabilized video cameras as well.

Marko

Many thanks for the replies...

I guess to summarise what people are saying, it seems that 'steady' panning works fine with AS switched on

It sounds like I should have AS on with a slower shutter-speed for shooting propeller aircraft, but maybe switch it off and take a higher shutter-speed for 'close-ups' of individual aircraft in fast-jet aerobatic teams?

I'll try this at the next display...

Thanks again!

No Text

That would be my lesson from my last airshow shoot as well....With Jet its more important to capture them, with prop plane you do want to make them look like they are flying...
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Maxxum 7
KM 5D
10 Lenses from 20mm-300mm
5600 HSD

I've had no problems panning aircraft with AS/SSS on with Minolta and Sony cameras. A recent one with the a100 with prop and background blur here:

http://www.ukexpert.co.uk/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=26843

Andy

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My Gallery:
http://www.ukexpert.co.uk/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=4

I believe the 7D Manual suggests that you turn of AS for panning (& for tripod use too). The AS would try to correct the movement of the panning, I shot an airshow in June and had AS off and got some excellent results except for a dust soeck on my sensor that I discovered later.

Dave
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Dave - Ontario Canada
Shooting a KM7D Until Sony gets their act together.

question is would it really do anything if you had left it on.....at least that's what I was curious about....
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Maxxum 7
KM 5D
10 Lenses from 20mm-300mm
5600 HSD

I believe that Olympus E-510 and some Canikon lenses has a switch for turning AS panning mode (AS that compensates only vertical movements).