2010 Petit le Mans - Take 2

cletus

Last week a posted a few of my Petit le Mans pictures to BlueHoseJacket's thread. After posting those pics I decided I wasn't happy with how my images from the race looked. I edited my post in BHJ's thread to remove my images, nuked my S.M. gallery, scrapped all the camera raw data and started over with a folder of nothing but DNG files. It took a lot of time but now I've got all the images ranked and keyworded they way I want. I'm also much happier with the results of my post processing. I wanted to share some of the 2nd pass images with everyone and see if anyone has suggestions on things I could be doing better. So, thanks for looking... a second time!

For some of these shots, I ran the D90's ISO down to 100 (Low 1.0 in Nikon Speak). I was trying to keep from hitting f/22 or higher when operating in shutter priority at 1/125. Is this a pretty common practice for daylight panning shots?
ISO 100, 1/125 @ f11


ISO 100, 1/125 @ f16


ISO 100, 1/125 @ f13


Diagonal composition with panning... yes? no? :dunno
ISO 200, 1/250 @ f11


More often than not I found I was slightly ahead of the car with my panning. I've got a lot of shots where the rear tire of the car is along the edge of the frame:
ISO 400, 1/250 @ f16


Anyone else have this problem? I'm guessing that for some reason I'm trying to center up the front of the car in the frame.


I also tried some shallow depth of field head-on shots
ISO 100, 1/4000 @ f2.8



Please share any comments or suggestions you might have!

photodad1

I like them, nice clear photos with the background in motion. Nice job. Did you shoot in Raw mode or JPG?

Sexy6Chick

Panning is not easy, so kudos to you on these shots! I LOVE the last one, great framing.

cletus

photodad1 wrote: »

I like them, nice clear photos with the background in motion. Nice job. Did you shoot in Raw mode or JPG?

Thanks! RAW mode. I changed to a new processing flow for these: The Photoshop CS5 7-Point System for Camera Raw from kelbytraining.com. I'm digging the results and things go much faster than the system I had been using.

Sexy6Chick wrote: »

Panning is not easy, so kudos to you on these shots! I LOVE the last one, great framing.

Thank you.

Mark1616

Some sweet cars and some nice shots captured of them.

In regard to your question on framing. For the majority of cars I focus on the door mirror to be on the centre focus point as this then puts the car slightly back in the frame so there is space for the car to move into in the finished shot. I've also used the number on the door as an area to keep centred, basically anything that is obvious so you don't need to worry about looking all around the frame when panning to ensure you are not cutting it off so you can worry about a smooth pan all the way around.

Kimyz250f

I like the 3rd shot the best but the angle of the 4th is really cool.

cletus

Mark1616 wrote: »

Some sweet cars and some nice shots captured of them.

In regard to your question on framing. For the majority of cars I focus on the door mirror to be on the centre focus point as this then puts the car slightly back in the frame so there is space for the car to move into in the finished shot. I've also used the number on the door as an area to keep centred, basically anything that is obvious so you don't need to worry about looking all around the frame when panning to ensure you are not cutting it off so you can worry about a smooth pan all the way around.

Thanks. At this race I was just overwhelmed by finally seeing these cars in person, their speed and my lack of practice in panning. I was just aiming at the car and swinging the camera along. Next time I'm shooting motor racing I will try to pick a common spot on the car to aim at while panning. I think that will help a lot! I'm sure I should be applying the same trick to any panning shots.

Kimyz250f wrote: »

I like the 3rd shot the best but the angle of the 4th is really cool.

Thank you! Trust me, #3 was pure luck

Mark1616

cletus wrote: »

Thanks. At this race I was just overwhelmed by finally seeing these cars in person, their speed and my lack of practice in panning. I was just aiming at the car and swinging the camera along. Next time I'm shooting motor racing I will try to pick a common spot on the car to aim at while panning. I think that will help a lot! I'm sure I should be applying the same trick to any panning shots.

It's true, and even more important when shooting slower shutter speeds with subjects closer to you where their angle in relation to you changes more as you will likely only get one part sharp so knowing which part (the one you keep in the same point) is key.

Nihilation

I traveled down to Petit Le Mans in 2008 and 2009 taking a pics as a super newb. Your shots look great although I think the angled shot of the Risi Ferrari has a bit too much angle, IMO.

misterb

Nice shots.

Try shooting Funny Cars @ 300mph!

When I pan, I shoot for between the front/rear wheels- IGNORE the car, and shoot.

I also heard about shooting the mirror.. but NHRA cars don't have mirrors.