Camera panning is a photography technique used to follow a moving subject when taking a photo. This creates a blurred background but keeps the subject sharp, which gives a sense of motion to the photo.
Panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a film or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device. Panning a camera results in a motion similar to that of someone shaking their head “no”.
Movie and television cameras pan by turning horizontally on a vertical axis, but the effect may be enhanced by adding other techniques, such as rails to move the whole camera platform. Slow panning is also combined with zooming in or out on a single subject, leaving the subject in the same portion of the frame, to emphasize or de-emphasize the subject respectively.
In video technology, the use of a camera to scan a subject horizontally is called panning.
Example of a panning technique photo
Panning is a photographic technique to suppress perspective shift of an object displacement, in photography, the panning technique is used to suggest fast motion, and bring out foreground from background. In photographic pictures it is usually noted by a foreground subject in action appearing still (i.e. a runner frozen in mid-stride) while the background is streaked and/or skewed in the apparently opposite direction of the subject’s travel.
The term panning is derived from panorama, a word originally coined in 1787 by Robert Barker for the 18th century version of these applications, a machine that unrolled or unfolded a long horizontal painting to give the impression the scene was passing by. (Barker also invented the cyclorama in which a large painting encircles an audience.)
