Hi everyone,

I looked through as many threads as I could regarding night time photography, specifically “panning”. I see a lot of threads that have refer to Canon and Nikon cameras, but not Sony. I have a Sony A7R III. I’m having difficulty with the settings for focusing. Seems like half the plane is focused, the other half isn’t. I’m sure it’s a setting I’m not familiar with and hoping someone on here can help out. I have a few pics as examples of my efforts.

Thanks in advance!!

Hi Drew,

Can you share a photo and the settings that you used?
Panning is basically tracking the aircraft as it flies by. So while you can use a low shutterspeed for the speed effect, steady hands go a long way towards getting sharp panning photos.

Panning technique is the same regardless of what equipment you use. Sony is still a minority within this community, so what you're seeing is simply a matter of numbers, not that it cannot be done. I assume you're handholding and you're keeping steadyshot on and using a lens that allows for hybrid steadyshot (e.g. 100-400 GM).

The main issue with panning at slow shutter speeds is that you can have different parts of the aircraft moving at different speeds relative to your position, causing different levels of motion blur. Also, be mindful that a pan is like a Y axis rotation, as opposed to a true side-to-side motion (which would be a truck), which also impacts how the image is recorded. If the plane isn't perfectly parallel, you'll end up with some off-axis motion blur.

The odds are that what you're seeing isn't out of focus, but rather motion blur due to bad technique (as mentioned above) or unstable motion. There's no substitute for a tripod and a gimbal at certain light levels.

Can you post examples of what you consider to be problems?

Drew1980 wrote:

Hi everyone,

I looked through as many threads as I could regarding night time photography, specifically “panning”. I see a lot of threads that have refer to Canon and Nikon cameras, but not Sony. I have a Sony A7R III. I’m having difficulty with the settings for focusing. Seems like half the plane is focused, the other half isn’t. I’m sure it’s a setting I’m not familiar with and hoping someone on here can help out. I have a few pics as examples of my efforts.

Thanks in advance!!

I'm not sure if you've posted photos, but this is a typical problem of being at an angle by the sound of it. This is what dvincent above is getting at. In those cases this is going to happen. I've nailed a few angled shots of an B777 lifting off at night at an angle, these were just luck more than anything, but the shutter was 1/30sec, so not very slow. Slower shutter speeds and a greater angle to the plane (I was already not parallel to it) would have wrecked it.

Sony specific settings I don't know about, I've rarely seen or used Sony DSLR cameras, only their video cameras.

Hi everyone, thank you so much for your feedback. Here are some pics...

/Thank you for your reply... yes it seems like the "good" shots I get are pure luck and I'm using either 1/15 or 1/10 sec on these shots. Can you help me figure out how to post pictures to this thread?

cpd wrote:

Drew1980 wrote:

Hi everyone,

I looked through as many threads as I could regarding night time photography, specifically “panning”. I see a lot of threads that have refer to Canon and Nikon cameras, but not Sony. I have a Sony A7R III. I’m having difficulty with the settings for focusing. Seems like half the plane is focused, the other half isn’t. I’m sure it’s a setting I’m not familiar with and hoping someone on here can help out. I have a few pics as examples of my efforts.

Thanks in advance!!

I'm not sure if you've posted photos, but this is a typical problem of being at an angle by the sound of it. This is what dvincent above is getting at. In those cases this is going to happen. I've nailed a few angled shots of an B777 lifting off at night at an angle, these were just luck more than anything, but the shutter was 1/30sec, so not very slow. Slower shutter speeds and a greater angle to the plane (I was already not parallel to it) would have wrecked it.

Sony specific settings I don't know about, I've rarely seen or used Sony DSLR cameras, only their video cameras.

This one is pretty blurry in general, but as you can see, one winglet is in focus and the other is not.

[photoid]https://www.instagram.com/p/Bv_kH0-hZ64/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link[/photoid]

I know this isn't a night time shot, but you can see there tail and winglets are not in focus.

Here's a better example... you can see that the majority of this pic is in focus, but the winglets are not.

[photoid]AJA05923 by Andrew Amador, on Flickr[/photoid]

Drew1980 wrote:

Here's a better example... you can see that the majority of this pic is in focus, but the winglets are not.

That's not focus, that's blur.

Completely normal at low shutter speeds, because the winglets are moving at a different speed relative to the fuselage (not actually a different speed, but a different apparent speed from your fixed standpoint). This is due to the winglets being closer/farther from you than the fuse.

As long as you get the fuse sharp, I'd say you're doing pretty good.

Drew1980 wrote:

Here's a better example... you can see that the majority of this pic is in focus, but the winglets are not.

That's not focus, that's blur.

Completely normal at low shutter speeds, because the winglets are moving at a different speed relative to the fuselage (not actually a different speed, but a different apparent speed from your fixed standpoint). This is due to the winglets being closer/farther from you than the fuse.

As long as you get the fuse sharp, I'd say you're doing pretty good.

Problem is, that little amount of blur on the winglets are whats preventing my pics from being posted on here. Ugh... annoying.

vikkyvik wrote:

Drew1980 wrote:

Here's a better example... you can see that the majority of this pic is in focus, but the winglets are not.

That's not focus, that's blur.

Completely normal at low shutter speeds, because the winglets are moving at a different speed relative to the fuselage (not actually a different speed, but a different apparent speed from your fixed standpoint). This is due to the winglets being closer/farther from you than the fuse.

As long as you get the fuse sharp, I'd say you're doing pretty good.

Drew1980 wrote:

Here's a better example... you can see that the majority of this pic is in focus, but the winglets are not.

Apologies for my slow reply - I'm usually riding a bike 500+km every week - so I'm not always reading here.

There is very little you can do in that case, the winglets are often shaking as well. The wings have engines hanging off them and those do cause some degree of movement.

I think you've done a decent job there.

I seem to remember some talk that the standards weren't quite as exacting for little bits of blur like that. I like using the play on light, blurring them out in that manner, it gives a great sense of movement that a higher shutter speed with higher ISO that is possible with these modern cameras just doesn't give.

Thanks so much for your feedback!! Have fun on your bike!!

cpd wrote:

Drew1980 wrote:

Here's a better example... you can see that the majority of this pic is in focus, but the winglets are not.

Apologies for my slow reply - I'm usually riding a bike 500+km every week - so I'm not always reading here.

There is very little you can do in that case, the winglets are often shaking as well. The wings have engines hanging off them and those do cause some degree of movement.

I think you've done a decent job there.

I seem to remember some talk that the standards weren't quite as exacting for little bits of blur like that. I like using the play on light, blurring them out in that manner, it gives a great sense of movement that a higher shutter speed with higher ISO that is possible with these modern cameras just doesn't give.

Drew1980 wrote:

Problem is, that little amount of blur on the winglets are whats preventing my pics from being posted on here. Ugh... annoying.

Winget blur in a slow shutter speed panning shot should not be preventing your photos from being accepted here. Examples of my own with winglet blur:



If the only rejection reason is a blurry winglet, I would appeal.

Thanks for the examples. Great pics!

vikkyvik wrote:

Drew1980 wrote:

Problem is, that little amount of blur on the winglets are whats preventing my pics from being posted on here. Ugh... annoying.

Winget blur in a slow shutter speed panning shot should not be preventing your photos from being accepted here. Examples of my own with winglet blur:



If the only rejection reason is a blurry winglet, I would appeal.