Ultra Slow Shutter Speed Motion Blur

I would like to show 1 example on how I get my ultra slow shutter speed motion blur/panning shots. The key to it is panning it with a smooth motion, and just let the high speed continuous drive fire non-stop for that short moment.

In this case, I was shooting the F1 Singapore 2012 Practice session 1 from the 26th floor of the Swissotel, panning with a 1D Mark IV and a 300mm f/2.8 lens out of the balcony! Of course shooting at such a high level, you really wanna double check that all your gear has been properly locked in, double sling over your neck, lens hood has been secured, etc. And then just look down, and it's really high.

I've selected 1/30th for this particular sequence, and with the 1D Mark IV having 10 frames per sec, I should be able to get something decently sharp with this. Firing short burst helps, sometimes it doesn't really work when you have to pan for more than 2 or 3 secs for these kind of ultra slow shutter peed shots.

So the important thing to do is when you review the pictures, make sure you review them on a computer, don't rely on your LCD on your camera which is too small for you to make a good decision what to keep, and what to delete.

So out of 11 shots in this sequence, I only have 1 shot that I need. That works out to a 9% hit rate! And yes this hit rate gets lower and lower when you reduce the shutter speed. However, don't give up, keep shooting!