Originally posted by simons-photography well in that case its no help at all in panning, I'm not really asking if panning will work with the SR on but if it will aid in getting a better picture by helping track the subject more acurately, but if its a motion detector then it won't help at all just make a mess of it if you go right the sensor goes left it will make things worse as its geared up for keeping in the same position not moving with the subject
There is no tracking going on. Object tracking is something very far away from digital cameras, the technologies available now like face recognition, smile detection and AF tracking all rely on contrast and color, identifying an object and it's exact position and boundaries in the frame is a task you couldn't achieve even with your quad-core desktop computer.
The manual says "turn off SR for panning". You're right, when you pan with SR on, it will try to correct your horizontal movement, moving the sensor in the opposite direction, ruining your tracking and causing blur to the subject. Some cameras have a Panning mode where it only corrects vertical movement, that's something Pentax could deploy.