MDR
NYC
5-D “PAN IN” is absolutely incorrect. There is no such term in film making or photography. Panning is when you turn or move the camera from side to side to see something different. The term is never used to indicate zooming or moving the camera forward to get a tighter shot of the same subject. Never. This answer crops up in crosswords every now and then. It apparently stems from an erroneous entry in a style book which misunderstood the usage in the source it referenced. Please stop putting it into puzzles, as it only helps amplify this error.
@Barry Ancona you have found the original, misinterpreted citation I was referring to. This is not a case of professional myopia in the face of amateur usage in place “for decades”—the amateur usage has never existed, but a mistaken reading of this single source, whenever that first occurred, introduced it into the crossword lexicon and it has stubbornly persisted. If inventing unused, erroneous definitions based on a single dictionary editor of yesteryear compiling idioms on subjects they do not understand can be waved off as “amateur usage” in total contradiction to the actual meaning, then we might as well rip up all the definitions of everything regarding every subject for which there is a verifiable and authoritative definition. Surely there should be some comparison with reality and a standard of logic applied before accepting a new usage blindly. In the original citation, the camera is described as “panning in” from an extreme wide shot of the Grand Canyon into a closeup of a single person. This is logical to people familiar with film language to describe an extreme wide angle view which pans across at the same time it is zooming in. Taking this as an exact synonym for “zoom” is completely false.
@SamBuddy just posted the same. This erroneous usage crops up in crossword puzzles once in a while and has unfortunately taken on a life of its own. The last time I saw it (several years ago) I tracked “pan in” to an entry in a style book which completely misread the cited source. It really needs to die.
@redweather absolutely correct. It originated from a bad style book entry which misinterpreted the source material. The once it started getting used in crossword puzzles it’s in the constructor software and apparently never coming out, even though it is completely wrong
@Warren that dictionary relies on a mistaken reading of the source material. It was wrong when it was written, wrong every time since that it has been cited, wrong every time it was used in previous crossword puzzles (the only place it is ever used fwiw), and is still wrong today.
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