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Infineon Raceway Action
Images from this past weekend's NASA (National Auto Sports Association) event.
The days were an eclectic mix of "real" racing and High Performance Driving Event sessions. HPDE allows anyone to drive their own car on a road circuit. Drivers are divided up into groups based on experience. Novices go out with instructors and strict passing zones are enforced. Those with more experience can run in more advanced groups with less restrictive passing rules and higher speeds.
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The days were an eclectic mix of "real" racing and High Performance Driving Event sessions. HPDE allows anyone to drive their own car on a road circuit. Drivers are divided up into groups based on experience. Novices go out with instructors and strict passing zones are enforced. Those with more experience can run in more advanced groups with less restrictive passing rules and higher speeds.
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Comments
Hah!
No. It's a '69 ChevyCamaro. The "General Lee" <Insert "Yee Hah!" here> is a '69 Dodge Charger. This Camaro is more Street Rod than Road Racer, but at least the Camaro had a history in road racing, most famously in the hands of Mark Donohue in the Trans-AM series of the late 60's and early 70's.
All of these shots are with a Canon 70-200 f/4 L and 1.4X Tele on a 10D.
There are two types of shots here, head on or 3/4 shots, and panning speed shots. For the panning shots I'll shoot at 1/180th in shutter priority (Tv mode on the Canon). At this shutter speed I'll be sure to get enough motion blur to be interesting, yet hopefully, enough keepers. With bright sun and iso 100 the aperture will be around f/11. Of course you can experiment with different ISO's and shutter speeds, but I wouldn't go any faster with the shutter.
For the 3/4 shots I'll set the shutter to 1/500 or 1/750th. If I'm seeing more of the side of the car I'll move to 1/500 to ensure some motion blur on the wheels. With the camera set to Tv and 100iso this will give me an aperture around f5.6, and this will help get the out of focus background that I think is so important. Most of myhead on shots are of the cars coming up over a rise. Try to find interesting spots like this to shoot from as much as possible. In this case I wasn't even in "over the fence" shooting with photo access. This is from the stands. In fact many Pro's shoot from the same spot during bigger events at this track.
Be aware of the sun when shooting also. I try to keep the sun behind me so the car is illuminated from the camera side. Of course you can get some dramatic lighting too with more backlighting like this:
Just keep practicing and experimenting.
Hope this helps.
I have the same lens mounted on a DRebel/300D.
On my first outting I started w/ very high ISO (ISO 800) levels and very fast (1/1000th) shutter speeds because I didn't want to come away empty handed. As the day progressed I backed off on the ISO and lowered my shutter speeds as I got more confident. I still have a lot of work to do on my 'panning' technique though.
Do you use a monopod? Do you find it to be a very valuable tool? I'm getting comments from some that it is essential for this type of photography. I tried using my tripod for support.. but it didn't work out very well. A decent monopod may be my next purchase..
Thanks..
You just don't want to use fast shutter with motorsports. Yeah, it will be sharp, but you'll just get what looks like a parked car on a track. Boring stuff. You'll see a lot of pictures out there like that. Now that you got the idea of panning and slower shutter speed it's just a matter of practice.
That and paying attention to composition like I said in my other post.
No monopod. I do have one, and I've used it a bit. But with the 70-200 I just don't use it to much. The 70-200 f/4 does not come with the tripod collar, I bought mine, cost $150! You really need it if you are putting the camera on a tripos or monopod with that lens). And the monopod just doesn't work for me if I'm panning. For head-on and 3/4 I could use it, I guess, and I'll try that next time (next event is in a few weeks, vintage F1 cars! And I'll have photo-access!!). Certainly with a bigger lens I would need the monopod, that's for sure.
Glad I could help.
-Brad
As per the monopod, I find a monopod almost impossible to use with motosports. So much so that I'll even hand-hold a 300/2.8 without one. You can't pan with a monopod, and I also find it too restricting to movement for nearly all other shots. Save the $$$ on the monopod and hit the gym.
A former sports shooter
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As for the collar for the 70-200/4.. I already bought the ring for the 200/2.8 last year. It works well and saved me about $50 over the white one. I find it just about essential for using the lens on the tripod.. especially if a TC is involved.