How do you shoot through a fence? Calling all Motorsport 'togs

You need to use a wider aperture to throw it out of focus and to manually focus on the track otherwise the AF will pick it up. You still often get a tell-tale criss-cross on the image.
 
get as close as you can (to the fence)
 
andrewc said:
You need to use a wider aperture to throw it out of focus and to manually focus on the track otherwise the AF will pick it up. You still often get a tell-tale criss-cross on the image.
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Really? Can you tell where this was shot from?


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Generally get as close as possible to fence, and shoot over 300mm, shoot manual exposure, and get a good prime with a focus limiter which will prevent the lens ever seeing the fence therefore maintaining AF.
 
stick your lens right up against the fence, with the centre line of the lens lined up with the centre of the hole in the mesh.. use longest focal length possible which narrows the angle and means the wire wont even be in your frame

personally i've never shot motorsport, but heres an owl in a cage LOL

IMG_3241.jpg
 
As already said above just get as close as you can, I was shown a neat trick once by a sales man in Jacobs, Hull.

He got a piece of blue tack, rolled it into a sausage shape and stuck it across the lens.
To my amazment when I looked through the view finder and focused it across the road... The blue tack had gone!

I understand why and how but I still think photography sales men have strange powers!

Well they must have because the get us to part with so much money :lol:

Phil
 
As said above, get as close to the fence as possible. This is probably one of the few occasions that I use a lens hood. I usually have the hood actually against the fence.
 
true_one_picture said:
As already said above just get as close as you can, I was shown a neat trick once by a sales man in Jacobs, Hull.

He got a piece of blue tack, rolled it into a sausage shape and stuck it across the lens.
To my amazment when I looked through the view finder and focused it across the road... The blue tack had gone!

I understand why and how but I still think photography sales men have strange powers!

Well they must have because the get us to part with so much money :lol:

Phil
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I'll remember that.......the next time I feel the urge to stick blutack onto my lens :lol: :wave:
 
For some strange reason I did something similar at the Renault World Series at Silverstone.

Had my 300mm on and used it for half a dozen shots before noticing things were a little on the dark side - turns out the camera strap was hooked across the middle of the lens. Amazed me, and made me realise how the lens works a bit better.
 
andrewc said:
My 100-300 doesn't have a focus limiter and I've not invested in a long prime yet...

My current solution is just to get in front of the fence.
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You could buy my 300mm prime from me lol that first shot the fence was actuall about 2meters away from me, and was a heavy duty catch fence at Brands Hatch.
 
Primes are much sharper, faster, and when fitted with focus limiter switches makes them even faster, and will deal with catch fences speaker poles etc as the lens simply will not even attempt to focus on anything closer then 1.5m or 3m depending on setting used.

To get a zoom to match them then you'd be spending around double, i am looking at 300mm f2.8 or possibly a 500mm to gain some extra length, primes also make you think a bit on the shot to.
 
I'm almost too embarassed to post this miserable shot, taken with my 100-400 zoom, through a wire mesh fence, but here goes nothing....

20080425_105547_3291_LR.jpg


Obviously a prime would cream this POS for IQ but I don't know of many 235mm f/5.6 primes. I know it's not motorsport but it is an example of a shot through safety fencing. Just get up close to the fence and shoot wide on aperture and long on focal length.

Here's a motorsport example, taken through mesh fencing, again with that barely adequate 100-400 lens, but this time at 100mm and f/4.5....

20070819_152015_LR.jpg


Lighting is flat, but you can't do much about the weather :( I know it's not much of a pan, but at 100 ISO and f/4.5 my shutter speed was up at 1/400 and without an ND filter that is where it needed to stay :( but at least you can't see the fence :)

That said, here's a shot at 400mm (same lens again) and f/10, again through mesh fencing....

20080608_134707_5054_LR-2.jpg
 
tdodd said:
I'm almost too embarassed to post this miserable shot, taken with my 100-400 zoom, through a wire mesh fence, but here goes nothing....
Click to expand...

i'm just wondering if...
a) you really do think thats a miserable shot
b) you actually know its really good and just want someone to say it is
c) you were being sarcastic
 
I was responding to the previous post which stated....

Primes are much sharper
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Many people criticise the 100-400 as being a soft lens, but I find the focal length range to be of extreme value to me. As a one lens solution I'd take the 100-400 any day of the week over a very limited prime. The three shots I posted are all with the one lens and cover the full extremes from 100-400mm, with 235mm thrown in for good measure. Just how much sharper does a lens need to be? I certainly would not like to spend many times the price and carry round many times the weight and bulk just to achieve a far more unwieldy and far less flexible solution with primes.

If I'd bought a 300 f/2.8 instead of the 100-400 I would not have come home with any of those shots, and that benefit of the zoom repeats itself over and over and over again in my birding photography, skiing photography etc etc.. I think losing a percentage point or two in IQ is worth it in order to be able to bag 10X (made up number, obviously) the number of shots I'd get with a single prime lens. That's my sales pitch for the zoom.

So, yes, you can call it sarcasm.

Here's a breakdown by focal length of shots I've taken in the past year with my 100-400. There are just four showing in the 550mm range, due to using an untaped 1.4X teleconverter, but there were many more shots taken with the teleconverter with tape, so invisible to the camera. I struggle to figure out a prime lens solution that would adequately cover the shots I managed with my zoom....

MWSnap%202008-08-01%2C%2000_03_31.jpg


p.s. Zooms also have focus limiter switches, plus IS, plus USM AF, adding further to their versatility, and making them equal to, if not better, than some primes in this focal length range.

As for the price issue, according to Camerapricebuster....

Canon 100-400 IS USM is ~£940 in the UK (mine came from Hong Kong for £841 delivered, including a 3 year international warranty and Hoya Pro-1D UV and CPL filters)
Canon 300 f/4 IS USM is ~£825
Canon 300 f/2.8 IS USM is £2799
Sigma 300 f/2.8 HSM is ~£1349 and lacks IS
Canon 400 f/5.6 USM is £790 and lacks IS
Canon 400 f/2.8 IS USM is ~£3999

so I can't really see much of a price advantage even with a single prime vs the zoom, never mind a whole raft of the things necesary to match the focal length range of the zoom.

I fully accept the benefits of a fast and constant aperture but there is a price to pay in weight and cost for fast glass and you still lose the focal length flexibility - and shots, when frigging about swapping lenses.
 
Personally, the fact that you so often use either extreme would suggest to me that it's probably not the best option? It seems like it's quite often too long (when you're racked out to 100mm) and quite often too short (when you're right in at 400mm). Not that primes would necessarily be the answer, of course, and they'd obviously be more expensive, but perhaps a 70-200 + 400 + TCs would give you the wider end, plus the extra reach, plus better image quality, plus a constant, faster aperture?
 
The focal length breakdown above includes images from all sorts of situations, including motorsport, wildlife, portraiture, candids, skiing, vacation, flora, "macro" with tubes. I checked out the 222 images shot at exactly 100mm (not the ~245 images within the 100-150 range altogether) and there are less than a dozen that might have benefited from a wider lens. That seems to me to make the 100-400 a pretty much perfect choice for the situations I was shooting in. If you want to nit-pick on the handful of shots that needed 90mm or whatever then you're missing the point. The 100-400 still slayed any one prime as the tool to get the job done.

I do have a 70-200 f/2.8 IS as well, and when it's right to use that lens I do. My point is that while a prime may give you a marginal increase in IQ, and perhaps focus speed, you will need to give up a huge amount of flexibility for those incremental improvements, and you will potentially lose a hell of a lot of shots as a result. You just can't frame a 100mm or 200mm shot with a 300mm or 400mm lens. Yes, you can buy another lens, and another lens, so you're out of pocket and have a lot more bulk and weight to lug around, and you'll still often find yourself without the exact focal length you really need, and you'll miss shots while changing lenses, or have to buy and carry another body, or more, and you may get dust on your sensor during a lens change and thus ruin your remaining shots for the rest of the day.

The 100-400 has a focus limiter switch, fast USM focusing, IS with panning mode and a price that I think positions it very favourably in relation to any number of the long primes with which it competes. If you always need reach beyond 400mm, for example, then fair enough, get a prime, but for the average hobbiest, such as myself, the 100-400 is a truly great choice in terms of performance, flexibility and value for money.
 
I rented a 100-400 to find out if it was any better than my 100-300 and I thought they were very comparable lenses. The extra 100mm was useful, but the extra stop of my Sigma (constant f4) meant that as light dropped off I switched over to the Sigma as the 100-400 was having trouble tracking cars.
 
I brought a 100-400mm, 300mm f4, and 400mm f5.6 at the same time to test, and sent the 100-400mm back to keep both 300mm and 400mm f5.6, when matched with a 70-200mm f2.8 i can honestly say i have never yet missed a shot with the primes. And both primes a far noticably sharper and much faster then the 100-400 well atleast the one i had anyway. I did post some test images from each lens to demostrate, but i think i have deleted the photos now. The standout thing was in low light where the 100-400 was a hell of lot slower then the 400mmf5.6. Also having twin primes and bodies means you have a back up if one or other fails, a safety net you dont have with one lens.

Personally i have image IQ over weight, if i had the money id have 70-200mm f2.8, 300mm f2.8, 400mm f2.8 and a 600mm f all with 1dmk3's fitted.
 
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