Fuji It does sports too

Yes it does! These are very similar to some X100 panning shots I did at a local criterium a couple of months ago. Here are a couple with the background motion blurred from panning and one of the background held still and the cyclists mere ghosts as they pass through the frame...

I wasn't smart enough to think of this in good light - I just took some very traditional stop-action sports shots which ended up being fairly boring. But as the light got low and the shutter speeds had to drop, I started playing around with the same technique you did and that's when it got interesting...

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I think Russ's first B&W is pretty classic, but it sort of needs a steel bike frame and cloth cycling cap instead of a high tech carbon frame and helmet - that's the only giveaway that its not from some classic race back in the '50s or '60s.

-Ray
 
Ray's right, of course.

As an aside, cycling is a very photogenic sport - a bit of blur looks good. And bicycles themselves are things of beauty.

And I love Ray's first shot with the mysterious background - a mixture of motion blur and bokeh.
 
Man oh man! Great shots indeed the both of you!!!! :clapping: I'd never have thought I'd see an X100 documenting such an event, but the results have a better feel for the dynamism and ardour of the sport than any I've seen. I'm still a'gasp....
 
Wonderful, Russ! Ray, you already knew I liked yours from before.

So even though you were shooting at 1/30th of a second at f/8, Russ, in #0250, you still managed to lock on to this bicycler! Obviously you both photographed the racers very well. Can you give us a few tips?

Love the feeling of speed!
 
Wonderful, Russ! Ray, you already knew I liked yours from before.

So even though you were shooting at 1/30th of a second at f/8, Russ, in #0250, you still managed to lock on to this bicycler! Obviously you both photographed the racers very well. Can you give us a few tips?

Love the feeling of speed!

I think the OVF really helps with panning, since you always see the subject in VERY real time. With an evf, there can be a little bit of lag. Not usually enough to matter, but with something like this, ANY lag can matter. I think you just have to stand there and try following the cyclist and pan with them and when you feel locked onto their pace, squeeze the shutter. I just looked at the exif on mine, and they're generally at 1/15 of a second. The one taken straight on where the racers are blurred and the background is still was at 1/60 - those guys are moving FAST and anything slower just left a ghost that you couldn't make out as a cyclist at all.

Oh, and there were a good number more misses than hits, so the panning isn't something that's gonna work all the time, so you just shoot a bunch and a few will surprise you. Its not like I had ANY idea which shots were gonna be keepers when I walked home from the race - it was only when I saw them come up on the computer that I could weed them out. The four or five panning and blurred shots I kept from that race probably came of 30-40 attempts. Probably not something I'd have tried much in the film days...

-Ray
 
As Ray said. And my 0.02$ - You can also pre-focus manually on a point that the subject is going to cross which helps with any shutter lag (minimal with the X, though). And imagine a pole running through your head to your toes and try to keep your centre (center ;)) locked on that - no swaying or sideways movement.
 
Very nice! There's something really cool about having just the one guy nailed and motion blur on all of the others. When I found some of mine like that I wasn't sure how much of it was the variable speeds of the riders (maybe this guy was really slow?) or something to do with the others being somehow on a different axis as you pan. Whatever, its a really cool effect. I have a bit of it in some of mine, but its really stands out well in this one.

-Ray
 
Great use of the equipment you have - especially like the third one, the panning is executed very well and the background colours set off the main subject beautifully.:2thumbs:
 
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