Help With Motor sport photography

reynolds

reynolds

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Steven
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I was probably not looking hard enough but i cant find any tips on motor sport photography so i thought i would ask. If its been covered then please link me to the thread

Right, i am off to Oulton park on saturday because there is some car racing on so i am in need of tips as too what settings to use and panning really

I know all the settings depend on weather conditions, where i stand on the track and whatnot but a rough idea would be good. I don't have a massive amount of lenses to choose from...in fact i only have 2 :lol: (18-55mm) and (55-200mm) for my d3100

sorry for the noob questions and if it has been covered but any help would be amazing

thanks
 
No worries, it can be a bit of a nightmare finding your way around new forums. I get lost all the time when I join other sites. :)
 
If shooting from usual public areas, it's often not possible to get really close to the track, so a longish lens will be needed. Fences can be a problem. If you can't find soemwhere that isn't obstructed by a fence, try and get close to the fence and shoot with a wide aperture. This will help the fence 'disappear' especially as you are likely to be panning too.

With regard to panning and shutter speed to use, this will depend on how far you are form the track, how fast the cars are going past your vantage point, and whether they are travelling straight past you or whether there is an element of coming towards/going away from you.

If you start at 1/250 you should be able to get sharp shots, but this sort of speed may be too fast to get much background blur as you pan, which is what gives images that sense of speed. However, as you become more comfortable with your panning technique, you can start dropping your shutter speed to get the effect you are happy with.
 
Ok thanks for that.

Well at oulton park you can get fairly close to the track in most places and from what I remember there isn't many high barriers

Ye I thought it would all depend on loads of stuff. Would you reccomend lock on focus so the camera isn't trying to focus all the time?
 
I think its in the tutorials section, but somewhere on here there's a really comprehensive guide to shooting at Oulton Park.

As for settings, if you can see the wheels on the car there needs to be some blur in them, if you can't (for instance, a head on shot) you can increase the shutter speed.

For panning, track the car before and after you press the shutter in one smooth movement. The key to panning is practice though.
 
I was shooting on Monday at Silverstone shutter speeds between 1/80 and 1/320 for blurred, but best 1/250 or less if you can manage the panning, just practice with plenty of shots.
 
If you lock focus, by the time you press the shutter the vehicle may well be outside of the area that will be sharp. If your camera has a decent tracking focus option I would use that. If it doesn't, you can revert to what we used to do in the days before AF systems ever found their way on to a camera; pre-focus on a bit of track in front of you that the vehicle will be passing over. Stand square on to that point, and then swivel at the hips to point towards where the car will be coming from. Once you have got the car in the viewfinder, it's then just a case of following it and pressing the shutter as it passes your pre-focus point.

It all sounds easy, but even though I had loads of practice using that technique, I still found it a bit hit and miss as I was so interested in what I was looking at through a telephoto lens that I usually forgot to press the shutter at the right time, or I'd press the shutter at the right time, but the framing was off. Long live AF.
 
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