Steel City 07 National Motocross again

schrox · December 30, 2007

I originally posted some pictures from the Steel City 07 National Motocross back in August a week or so after the race took place, here are some additional ones, hope you enjoy. C&C welcomed.

Ted

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

pastoral · December 31, 2007

Wow!
Some really great shots! I really envy you the opportunity the shoot at such a great venue.

Alan

BikePilot · December 31, 2007

Good shots!

I really like #12. Shame that clump of mud is blocking the front wheel though

Arvan · December 31, 2007

Nice captures! love the last one!

Matt336 · December 31, 2007

Nice photos! Check out my Millville photos I posted.:D

schrox · January 1, 2008

Thanks for the comments everyone. Here are a couple more like #12, not quite as good though.

Ted

#13

#14

mercphoto · January 2, 2008

schrox wrote:

I originally posted some pictures from the Steel City 07 National Motocross back in August a week or so after the race took place, here are some additional ones, hope you enjoy. C&C welcomed.

Hey Ted. Some comments on what to do differently next time.

Shots 1 through 4 show rider's backs, not their fronts. Sometimes it works. But shots 1 and 3 are too soft in addition to being their backs. The combination makes for a ho-hum photograph. Also the background in number 2 makes me feel icky. A distracting mix of headless spectators.

As with all photography, watch your backgrounds!

This was a difficult venue to shoot I'm sure, but zoom out just a bit and get some heads with those people and things would be better. Number 7 has another odd background as well. Seeing a jump shot with no sky in the background, just grass and trucks.

On 5, nice jump shot, but they generally look better with the front wheel up rather than down. Catch them on the way up, not on the way down.

Number 6 is another soft shot. I don't know if you're having focus issues or if your shutter is too slow and you're not panning well enough.

Lastly, on shots 10 and 11, your main subject, the bikes, are under-exposed. They are dark. You can solve this in multiple ways. First is shadow enhancement in Photoshop, the least perferred way. Second is to use a flash when you take the photograph to add light (which I always did when I shot MX). Lastly, choose your shooting direction based on the direction of the sun and your subject, the highly preferred way. This may mean that you can only shoot that particular location in the mornings, or only in the evening. But watch your sun's angle to your shots.

schrox · January 2, 2008

Thanks for the critique Bill. I was using manual focus, that's probably why some are soft. Thanks for the tip about the backgrounds and sorry about the heads on #2, I was a little too agressive with the cropping. Thanks for the tip about using flash and keeping in mind where the sun is, I'll need to remember that.
What shutter speed did you normally use when you shot MX?

Ted

mercphoto · January 3, 2008

schrox wrote:

Thanks for the critique Bill. I was using manual focus, that's probably why some are soft. Thanks for the tip about the backgrounds and sorry about the heads on #2, I was a little too agressive with the cropping. Thanks for the tip about using flash and keeping in mind where the sun is, I'll need to remember that.
What shutter speed did you normally use when you shot MX?

Ted

I normally shot 1/640. It was slow enough to capture a bit of wheel motion, but fast enough to get a crisp shot. I'd usually venture down into the 1/125 range in the day, but riders almost never bought those. They wanted the crisp, faster shutter shots. Seemed odd to me, but if you look at the MX magazines, all those photos are very fast shutters. They want to look like the magazines.

j-bo · January 3, 2008

I was using manual focus

Why? MX is too fast to try manual focus. Maybe when you are shooting late or something , but I don't understand why not use AF?

I had a new local guy doing the same thing.. soft and OOF shots galore. I finally had to ask him what he was focusing on, he said.. I'm doing what the pro's do, manual. I said manual what? He said, focusing... I had to tell him when the pro's talk about "manual", it is shutter speed and aperture settings, not focus. His shots have turned out much better now.

schrox · January 3, 2008

J-BO, the main reason for manually focusing was the lens I was using, Tamron 55-200/4-5.6 Di II LD Macro. This lens hunts occasionally when trying to focus. I thought that by pre-focusing on a section of the track I would stand a better chance. I really should have used AF some of the time though and then I could have compared the two.

schrox · January 3, 2008

Bill, thanks for the shutter speed info.

j-bo · January 3, 2008

Ahh.. okay... maybe try and focus on a rider or 2 or 5 that come through for your focus point instead of spots on the track? I did that when I did some night racing shots. Not the best.. but worked pretty good.

Thanks for sharing!

Steel City 07 National Motocross again

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