Wave panning technique

[Paul Heester]

Have just returned from a holiday on the Dorset coast at Lyme Regis and had a chance to try my hand at wave panning. This is a technique of combining slow shutter speeds with panning to get a silky-ish kind of effect on breaking waves. The below were all shot around midday so I needed some way to slow down the shutter speed. I added my polariser to my lens (blocks around 2 stops of light) and shot at ISO 100 and either F32 or F36. This got me down to 1/13 - 1/8 which gave a nice effect to the waves. Colour straight OOTC was grey so I have colorised them to add some interest. Most were cropped to get the diagonal wave across the frame.

The only downside to this technique is that at such a small aperture Ive realised I have LOTS of dust on my sensor! A purchase of a sensor cleaning kit is on its way

Anyway, hope you like them and please let me know your thoughts.

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[Mike Farley]

Hi Paul. Thanks for posting and passing on the details of the wave panning technique. It's an interesting effect, but I wonder if it needs a rougher sea than the ones you found and have more than one wave in the image?

[Paul Heester]

Hi Paul. Thanks for posting and passing on the details of the wave panning technique. It's an interesting effect, but I wonder if it needs a rougher sea than the ones you found and have more than one wave in the image?

Sadly it was only windy enough on our final afternoon to try this technique and the waves were admittedly very small. Guess its possible to capture more than one wave but you really want them breaking. I guess its all experimentation and when Im next by a coast with the right conditions I will give this technique another shot.

[Mike Farley]

Hi Paul. Thanks for posting and passing on the details of the wave panning technique. It's an interesting effect, but I wonder if it needs a rougher sea than the ones you found and have more than one wave in the image?

Sadly it was only windy enough on our final afternoon to try this technique and the waves were admittedly very small. Guess its possible to capture more than one wave but you really want them breaking. I guess its all experimentation and when Im next by a coast with the right conditions I will give this technique another shot.

It's definitely worthwhile persevering. You might want to think about putting a filter on the lens and having a cleaning cloth handy as there could be a lot of salt spray around when conditions are right.