Whirlwind

(A panning shot of the bush)

Last week, there was a post on panning shots for shooting static subjects for which I took plants as examples for the sake of illustration. The discussion will be incomplete without looking into another similar technique which is rotating the camera.

If you use a DSLR or SLR with a zoom lens, the same trick can be done by rotating the zoom ring while pressing the shutter all the way down. For the sake of our concern, let's stick to serious compacts like GRDII, GX200, LX3, G10, P6000 and you name it.

Expose the scene to your liking but the shutter must be dragged down to a speed slower than the velocity of your rotating the camera (start from 1/15s depending on the lighting situation; you should experiment). Then press the shutter and rotate the camera. Usually, the rotation should be a quarter of a full circle to the maximum. For the above photo, the shutter was set to 1/4s (way beyond the safe shutter speed but doesn't matter much because a clear centre image is not needed here) and the camera had been rotated nearly half way to a circle when the shooting was done. It was too blurred to my taste.

So with the same exposure combo, the camera was rotated again by half a quarter of a circle this time. This produced the following photo.

If you wish the pivot spot to be away from the centre of the image, tilt the lens to the desired spot when the camera is rotated. This will end up with an image like the one above. A caveat is that the farther away the pivot spot from the centre, the more oval-like it will appear in the final image.

Depending on your creativity, these handy tricks of panning and rotating the camera can be useful in a wider application to achieve desired results. Take for example, these techniques can be used in shots of decorative Christmas lightings to give a more fancy atmosphere in the images like what the some of the photos here and here.

A human subject can be used in the centre for sure. In this case, the shutter speed should be safe enough not to prevent too much shaking. The rotation will give a diffused look to the image. You should experiment the best rotation effect to your taste. Also try this at night with a human subject at the centre and colourful lightings in the background to see what you will get.