On Thu, 11 Jan 2001 05:11:36 GMT, "Alexander Ibrahim" wrote:

>Uh...humans can't pan.
>
>Well, pay attention to what you are doing with your eyes as you
>turn your head. You can't focus while your eye is moving across a
>still scene.( a physiological fact), so at best you stop and look
>at several different objects. Try holding your eyes still in
>their sockets and moving your head. You'll notice it is pretty
>hard to move your eyes smoothly.
>
>This brings us to the proper basic use of a pan...to follow a
>moving object while keeping it in frame. If I watch you walk by,
>turning my head you stay in focus. Your eye can track a moving
>object and focus.
>
>Your eye evolved to track moving objects. It does so very well.
>It was essential to hunting and surviving being hunted.
>
>It can't take in a whole scene smoothly. In other words it can't
>pan over a scene. That and zooming are perhaps the only things a
>lens system can do better than human eyes.
>
>So skip the panning over the crowd scenes. And the panning over
>the cake. Please.
>
>Other ways to use panning ? In a dramatic scene you can
>occasionally use a pan to reveal the scene. You can use a whip
>pan (a very fast pan) as as style of cut to convey surprise

Uh, I sometimes think IA comes from an interesting,
if different, universe...;-), ;-), ;-) Sometimes the
"bottom-line" advice is worthwhile, but the underlying
"facts and logic" are, uh, interesting...;-) As for the
above, how 'bout "eye-turning"? Looks like panning to
me, and it can be done quite smoothly, while keeping
things in focus... As for zooming, some of us have
bothered to train our vision to see in wide-angle
(even to about 180 degrees), and to change both
the placement and size of our "attention spot".
And, I'm a proponent of the "moving camera"
style of shooting, potential viewer
nausea be damned! ;-)