Camera Moves

Panning and Tilting

For both of these shots the camera is stationary and rotates in a horizontal (panning) or vertical (tilting) plane.

Panning  is used to follow a moving object or character, or to show more than can fit into a single frame, such as panning across a landscape.  It is also used as a transition between one camera position and another.

Inexperienced operators may pan too fast and caused an effect known as strobing.   This is also a problem in CG and is called tearing.  This can cause motion sickness or cause the illusion of motion to be broken.  For example, for an animation at 30 fps, the number of frames needed for a 45 degree pan would be about 22 frames for a quick turn or 66 frames for a casual turn.

One way to avoid strobing is to use scene motion blur when rendering.  This blur is done by sharing information between frames.  Note that this is a scene motion blur where a scene shares information from the prior and next scenes.  This is not the same as object motion blur.

The same motion considerations about panning are valid for tilting.

Dolly and Tracking shots

A dolly is a small wheeled vehicle, piloted by a dolly grip, that is used to move a camera around in a scene. A dolly shot is a move in and out of a scene, i.e., the movement is parallel to the camera lens axis. A tracking shot is a movement perpendicular to the camera lens axis. The key to these shots is to have realistic motion. The motion can be judged by looking at how fast humans move and then how many frames it would take to realize this motion.