Hare Scramble @ Valley Dirt Riders

Charla

My husband is racing the Winter Hare Scramble series at our local track so naturally I tagged along to take some pics. I had a great time at the race but for some reason I'm having a hard time getting excited over these shots. I figured I'd post them anyway so you guys can help me figure out how to do better at the next round.

I was having a horrible time finding angles that didn't have terribly cluttered backgrounds. I wasn't able to move around very much because I had to keep one eye glued to the viewfinder and the other glued to the little ones. :huh That's pretty tough for those of you who haven't tried it before!

KM5D w/ Tamron 70-300 f4/5.6 in aperture priority mode

1/1250 / f5.6 / ISO400 / EC -.30


1/320 / f11 / ISO400


1/1250 / f7.1 / ISO400


1/320 / f10 / ISO400

dbaker1221

I've only shot it once. but I think you did a good job.

ThrobbingV8

Good shots
Hi,

For next time you might want to try getting down lower on the jump shots and see if you can access the inside corners. Also try slowing down the shutter speed to get some movement in the wheels and give some panning a go. You will love the results!!

Really liked the third shot.

Great to see another Chicky out shooting motorsport

Charla

dbaker1221 wrote:

I've only shot it once. but I think you did a good job.

Thanks! Appreciate the comment

Charla

ThrobbingV8 wrote:

Hi,

For next time you might want to try getting down lower on the jump shots and see if you can access the inside corners. Also try slowing down the shutter speed to get some movement in the wheels and give some panning a go. You will love the results!!

Really liked the third shot.

Great to see another Chicky out shooting motorsport

I did try to vary some between slow shutters to show motion and wide apertures to blur the backgrounds but it just so happens that the best shots of the day really accomplished neither of those goals :cry

I love to ride and shoot motorcycles, I never did understand why girls were supposed to sit on the sidelines and watch while to guys have all the fun! I haven't attended any four wheeled races yet but Denver does have a Grand Prix and there's also the Pike's Peak Rally Car event. That would be fun to see!

Appreciate the comments

xtnomad

Keep up the good work.

ThrobbingV8

Rally
Rally is great fun even with a mouth full of dirt.

I use Aquatech covers to keep the dust out if my camera gear.

Charla

xtnomad wrote:

Keep up the good work.

Thanks!

Charla

ThrobbingV8 wrote:

Rally is great fun even with a mouth full of dirt.

I use Aquatech covers to keep the dust out if my camera gear.

That's a cool shot! I occasionally watch rally events on TV but I've never attended a race. I'll definitely have to keep that on my list of things to do.

mercphoto

In general, slower shutters work better with profile shots, and faster shutters work best with head-on shots. You have this backwards. One of the jump shots has that red ribbon in the background. Fix this simply by shooting somewhere else. Getting lower can help with jumps, you get more sky background, but being low and getting a jump shot, especially when coming nearly head-on, can be very hard to do. Reactions must be very fast. You either need to manually pre-focus or have a very fast focusing camera (i.e. Canon 1-series with L-glass type speed).

Try putting the camera into shutter priority and just stick to 1/640. Adjust ISO to get an aperture from 5.6 to 11. Then try some different angles and watch your backgrounds.

Keep at it.

Charla

mercphoto wrote:

In general, slower shutters work better with profile shots, and faster shutters work best with head-on shots. You have this backwards. One of the jump shots has that red ribbon in the background. Fix this simply by shooting somewhere else. Getting lower can help with jumps, you get more sky background, but being low and getting a jump shot, especially when coming nearly head-on, can be very hard to do. Reactions must be very fast. You either need to manually pre-focus or have a very fast focusing camera (i.e. Canon 1-series with L-glass type speed).

Try putting the camera into shutter priority and just stick to 1/640. Adjust ISO to get an aperture from 5.6 to 11. Then try some different angles and watch your backgrounds.

Keep at it.

Ahhhh that's exactly the kind of info I'm looking for! Thanks Bill. I will definitely keep these setting in mind next time I head out to the track.

I did consider cloning out the red ribbons but decided against it. That giant pipe in the ground wasn't really intended to be a jump but was supposed to slow down the riders coming into the checkpoint, with the ribbons there to bottleneck the traffic a bit. This was one of the few guys I saw actually jump it. Air shots were tough to come by because I didn't really feel like hoofing it all the way around the track with two little kiddies in tow.

Yeah I know.... excuses are like elbows, everybody's got a couple.

Thanks again for the advice.