Spent a long day at Gingerman Friday with some friends and acquaintances.. left at 6AM, got back home at 10PM. It was a lot of effort but totally worth it. Had a lot of fun, got to drive a Crossfire someone had rented for one session, and also drove the 360 around downtown South Haven for a while after the event was over, going to dinner (I asked the owner if he minded a passenger, he said "wanna drive? I'm tired". How could I refuse. ) Here are some pics to start off, I will post more later. This was my first motorsport event with the 5D.

 

sweet shots

curious thou, did you find the 3fps quite slow? cause if i remember correctly the fps of the 5D is the same as the XTi, and there were times when i went to a drifting competition and found i need 5fps or more.

 

Yea, it was kind of slow. I compensated by taking many pics. I also did a good amount of cropping.

 

It also showed me how many dust spots I have on the sensor... I only saw a few before because all the club shots are dark. But I have quite a good amount, I am gonna have it cleaned this week.

 

Nice! I like them all, but the light on the first car is

 

yea it was a generally overcast/cloudy day... but the sun came out in its full glory a few times..

 

 

Nice shots!

 

How do you take a photo like that; get the car in focus, yet the background is blurry, etc?

 

pan the camera with the car as it drives by

 

Nice work Srika! You must have been very close to the track for these. When I shoot motorsports I'm usually 60-100 feet away and sometimes shooting through a fence.

 

(I'm working on a detailed answer for you.)

 

Yeah there were times when I was close (like right next to the rail) but there were other times not so close. And keep in mind my max zoom was 105mm... I felt very limited by it. It had me longing for a 300 or 400. But I shot big enough to give me lots of cropping room.

 

Good job Srika! Doing those pan-and-shoot shots aren't as easy as one might think, especially with something fast. These turned out very well

As for the dust

"Olympus is the only digital camera manufacturer that has a proven anti-dust system. Our exclusive Supersonic Wave FilterTM vibrates 35,000 times per second to eliminate dust from the image sensor, along with any concern you'll ever have about changing lenses ... anywhere. With the EVOLT E-500 you can be confident that you’ll get spot-free pictures, every time. "

 

thx - I think the IS helped out a LOT as well... I took 860 pics, out of those, probably 80% came out. After weeding them down to the really good ones and non-dupes, I am at 248 post-worthy shots. Considerably better keeper rate than the last time I was there with the D70.

As far as Olympus' dust cleaning thing.. that doesn't really help me. But thanks, I guess.

 

Yeah...I know, I was just ragging on ya'

 

Really nice pan shots, srika. You did a nice job of keeping the car in nice, sharp focus. It looks like your shutter speed was just about right, too, to allow the wheels and BG to blur. Very nice sense of motion in all of the shots. Panning can definitely be a hit or miss proposition.

Nice job

 

oic. can I assume you have that camera? if so, how do you like it.

 

Some of this may be obvious, I'm gonna write it all just to be clear. And, this is from my experience, you may choose to do certain things differently, based on preference. Or, some of it may be the wrong way to do it - this is just what gets me the results I want.

1. Switch to manual mode.

2. Set "burst" shutter release mode - this is what lets your camera take multiple pictures when you keep the button held down. You want to hold the camera as steady as possible as the car is driving by - and if you have to keep pressing the shutter, that's not going to help.

3. Set your AF to an "adaptive" mode. You want the mode that doesn't lock the AF once it has focused on the subject - you want the mode where the AF continually focuses while the subject is in view. This is because when you are panning for these shots, the distance of the subject is going to vary. If you have AF on lock, you would get one or two sharp shots and the rest would be soft/blurry. On Canon this is called "AI Servo" mode. On the D70 (and probably other Nikons) it's called "Closest Subject" AF-Area mode.

4. Set f/ to 20-22 or so.

4. Set shutter speed depending on lighting conditions, it should be fast enough that it "catches" the action without blurring the car yet slow enough that it doesn't freeze the motion of the wheels. It's a balance you have to find by playing with it and zooming in on the captured pic to see what the details look like (what a luxury, eh?). It depends on lighting conditions so there is no set value to use. For most of my shots I was between 180-250 or so. It also depends on how fast the cars are going.

5. Stand at a good location that gives you room to move around while at the same time allows you to stay balanced well. You are going to be rotating your body, possibly very quickly. This is obviously going to depend on how close you are.

6. As the car(s) come by, stand with steady footing and pan the camera in a smooth horizontal motion, keeping the car as centered as you can (or however else you want it to look). Adjust zoom as needed thereof. Rotate your upper body, this will help keep the shots as stable as possible.



Some more tips just because I'm in a writing mood -

- don't stand where you have the potential to distract drivers. i.e. at the end of a straight (and going into a turn), and other tricky parts of the track. I guess you can do this if you really want to, I just choose not to, because I'd hate to have a driver wipeout and blame me for it. :P You should blend in with the environment as best as you can and be as inconspicuous as you can.

The midpoint of a straightaway is a great place to position yourself - the cars are going fast so you get a great sense of speed, and they are going straight so there is not much thought involved - they may even look over for a glance or give you some hand signal for effect.

- don't stand where you may be putting your well-being at risk - this is obvious, but sometimes you really have to think about where you are standing, you may not realize its a precarious spot until its too late. Accidents aren't common but that's why they're called accidents.

If I can think of any more I'll post em. If anyone else has any tips and pointers, please share, everyone can learn from em.

 

I really liked this 350Z... the wheels do it.

 

why do you set the f stop to 20-22? hmm... maybe that was what i was doing wrong with my panning shots

 

And this is why I don't want to plunk down $$$ for a DSLR. I don't have comfidence to think that I can learn all that to take that kind of a pic.

 

Honestly I don't know the technical reason for it. This is just a setting someone shared with me when I was at F1 my first year with the D70. Maybe some of the more technical peeps know what the explanation is. I'm not even sure I can formulate a guess as to why it should be set that way.. I tried thinking about it but came up kinda empty...

 

oh man.. I surely didn't want to discourage anyone with my (wordy) answer.. I just wanted to give you the whole package, everything you need to know to take pics like that. Once you have your camera set with those settings (which I gave you), you just take the pics. You just have to adjust shutter speed depending on lighting.

 

All I can think is that you want the blur to be due to motion, rather than limited DoF. It may sound like an oxymoron to talk about detailed blur, but I would think the lines would be wider and less crisp if you had a shallow DoF.

 

I have confidence that someone who understands your avatar can figure it out.

 

 

Oh, or maybe so you can have a slow enough shutter that you get the blur. If your aperture is too wide, you'll have to really bump up the shutter speed in broad daylight.

 

^^ yup I think thats it.

 

i know its not the greatest picture but this is one i took w/ iso100, 1/80s f/8.0

 

Pretty good 'Zouse. You caught the action and got the wheels blurred. And the smoke is fun too.

 

although with yours the entire car looks sharp, mine there is some softness to the cars. so maybe thats why you need the f/20-22

or maybe its my mediocre lense

ill experiment when i goto another motor sport event

 

I think thats a depth of field issue... I get that too, with certain angles... the front section will be in focus with the focus trailing off towards the rear.. or vice versa. Side-shots are always completely sharp (when sharp) because all sections of the car are the same distance away. I would use widest angle to get the entire car sharp for such purposes. And would then most likely have to do some cropping.

 

+1, especailly in daylight conditions when it would be hard to get slow enough shutter speeds with a large aperture.

Srika, any PP on these shots?

 

^^I've also used Tv mode for these types of shots with good success. Just set the SS and let the camera choose the aperture.

 

always.. some of them I went subtle but on others I kinda cranked it up and had some fun.. I should have the rest soon..

 

You shoot F22 because it would be impossible to achieve a slow enough shutter --- in daylight conditions --- with a wide open lens.

F2.8@1/8000's vs. F22@1/50th all at ISO 100 = approx. same exposure value, but entirely different images when motion is introduced.

Your best bet, shoot aperture or shutter priority and have at it.

 

thought so.

the rest are up over here:

http://www.delobbo.com/gallery2/v/060807_gingerman/

more of my fav's:

 

sweet pictures.

and yea it makes sense setting it to f/22 now, i guess i just got lucky with the overcast weather that my pictures were around f/8

 

I usually just put my polarizer on if it's too bright. You could also use a ND filter if you have one. f/22 will be pretty soft on cropped bodies because of diffraction. I try not to go above f/11 or f/16 whenever possible. f/22 on a full frame body is like f/16 on a cropped sensor as far as diffraction is concerned.