Difficulty panning smoothly with D7000

When I pan my D7000, it's VERY jittery. I'm new to DSLR video and don't know what to do about it. A pan from my Sony HC9 is very smooth.

Here's a frame grab from Edius after doing a "save as" in QuickTime Pro:

It's jittery in QT Pro as well as on the timeline in Edius.

I used manual focus in program mode with a wide aperature and low ISO.

Thanks for any help!

What was your shutter speed cdoyal? Hard to say from just a still image but it looks like it could be motion blur which means you had your shutter set too low (you need a minimum of 1/60th in NTSCland).

HDSLR's are not great at panning shots or anything with lots of movement so it just could be that. Another possible explanation is lens Image Stabilization issues. Try to discount them one by one to find the culprit. Hope this helps.

Cheers, Simon

As Simon says, it's a combination of 2 things (in order of importance):

1. Pan speed: Looking at your frame, I can see you've panned too quickly (CMOS slant). Shooting in 24 fps, cameras need to be panned slowly, especially with CMOS cameras to prevent CMOS slant. The ASC manual has a great chart for pan speeds with regards to focal length and fps. Off the top of my head, I remember for 35mm lens @ 24fps, the panning speed should be 18 seconds for a 90° sweep. Any faster and it will cause strobing.

2. Shutter speed: When you put it in P mode, the camera will select everything for you. By the looks of the ghosting in your image, I think P mode chose a shutter speed that was too slow for your pan speed. Always shoot in either M or S mode. Since the D7000 doesn't allow full manual control, you'll have to deal with either jumping ISO. Always use AE lock to freeze settings once you've exposed correctly. The standard shutter speed for 24fps motion blur is 1/48 or 1/50 if your camera doesn't have it.

There have been some issues in the past with the Apple Intermediate Codec causing pans to look like that so you might check that as well.

As Simon says, it's a combination of 2 things (in order of importance):

 

1. Pan speed: Looking at your frame, I can see you've panned too quickly (CMOS slant). Shooting in 24 fps, cameras need to be panned slowly, especially with CMOS cameras to prevent CMOS slant. The ASC manual has a great chart for pan speeds with regards to focal length and fps. Off the top of my head, I remember for 35mm lens @ 24fps, the panning speed should be 18 seconds for a 90° sweep. Any faster and it will cause strobing.

 

2. Shutter speed: When you put it in P mode, the camera will select everything for you. By the looks of the ghosting in your image, I think P mode chose a shutter speed that was too slow for your pan speed. Always shoot in either M or S mode. Since the D7000 doesn't allow full manual control, you'll have to deal with either jumping ISO. Always use AE lock to freeze settings once you've exposed correctly. The standard shutter speed for 24fps motion blur is 1/48 or 1/50 if your camera doesn't have it.

Just wanted to correct you on one important thing; you claim that the D7000 does not provide full manual video control, but it sure does! The D7000 gives you full manual control over video exposure (time, aperture, iso, white balance etc).

There is one minor limit though; you will need to exit live view to alter the aperture (and white balance).

Just wanted to correct you on one important thing; you claim that the D7000 does not provide full manual video control, but it sure does! The D7000 gives you full manual control over video exposure (time, aperture, iso, white balance etc).

There is one minor limit though; you will need to exit live view to alter the aperture (and white balance).

Yes I am aware of that. So that's not really full manual control but a manual-ish mode no? You can't use the exposure meter to gauge exposure adjustments easily without peering into the VF. I think we are getting into semantics but the classic "Manual control" in my mind is where I have control of the 2 most important parameters that control exposure: Shutter speed and aperture on dial adjustment. That's why Nikon doesn't claim there is full manual control.

Still, thanks for adding that information which I was remiss in not mentioning it.