Beginner here:

I open up a new project; add an image.

The image properties state that the size of the image is greater than the size of the project (for a test I used a 3000x3000 pixel image).

When I bring it in, it always gets scaled down to fit within my project monitor; render it, and it stays scaled down


Just learning here,would really like to scan around the oversized image, but since it scales down I can't do it.

Is this normal behavior, to scale a clip down so that it fits within the project constraints?

How would one go about doing a pan across the while image then?

Never did what you want to do, but I had to do the opposite, where I had 1080p footage and only wanted to show a part of scaled up to 720p: there is a scale filter effect available (also zoom out if I remember correctly) and this effect also allows you to pan around and set control points.

You need to use the pan and zoom effect to achieve this

Just noticed that the video tutorial section has a tutorial on how to zoom and pan a panorama image. This should also help as this seems to be what the op wants to achieve in a similar way. Look for the panorama tutorial video.