Night time sports photography.

nessiemac

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Dave
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Morning,

I do a lot of bike photography covering downhill mountain bike races and general riding days and i am very comfortable doing so.

However, I have an upcoming race where for the first time the event is practice during the day and race at night!

This will be timed runs in the dark with the riders using bar and helmet mounted lights with no trackside lighting at all and whilst it should be a great event, i am rather apprehensive about getting the photos right!

Anyone else done anything like this in the past and how did you manage, in particular how did you focus on a subject coming towards you in the pitch black.:nailbiting:

I am not too concerned with the exposure side of things as i have 3 flashes with triggers and should be able to position them in a way that doesn't blind the riders, it's the focus issues.

I had a play last night and thought a trackside torch to illuminate them would work but it was too bright for my rider and too distracting, ended up pre focusing and switching to manual and had pretty decent results so this may be the way to go.

Couple of shots below. Not very exciting photos, just to try various settings. These were taken with no ambient light at all, hence all the huge May bugs landing on me!!

One at 1/30th which has pretty much frozen the rider and light and the other at 1/4 with frozen rider but some light trail showing.

1. 1/30th. F8. ISO400.


1/30. F8. ISO 400 by nessiemac1, on Flickr


2. 1/4. F6.3. ISO 400


1/4. F6.3. ISO 400 by nessiemac1, on Flickr


So any ideas or tips guys?

Cheers

Dave
 
Last edited:
Hi, sorry but the trails in the second shot don't do it for me. If you're looking to capture trails I think you'd get better results shooting from side-ways on the bike as it passes or maybe from the front if you can position yourself safely (a bike in the air from a jump might give some good trails as it descends maybe?) I'm only just getting started with flashes but wouldn't rear-curtain flash improve the effect of movement on the image? that said, I'm not sure if that's possible with remote triggers though.

Cheers,
Paul
 
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