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Tips for Motorsport pics - Panning shots

Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 6:44 pm
by Angry
Panning Shots,

stand with feet 60cm apart, plant feet, twist from the waist up,

stand on the inside of a corner, if possible pick a spot with a constant radius to the cars/bikes/karts

Set camera to Shutter Priority select shutter speed of 90th or 125th of second this allows the background to blur & wheels to spin,

focus on car early, fire shutter through start & middle of turn....get em coming into & through the corner.....no-ones interested looking at the back of a car,...unless its on fire

Squeeze shutter softly swim smoothly following through smooth swing keeps car in focus, slow shutter speed allows back ground to blur

Happy Hunting :D :D :D

Re: Tips for Motorsport pics - Panning shots

Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 8:56 am
by nomad
Like you say pan thru the shot etc.
The only thing I would add is to set the lens to manual focus and prefocus on one spot.
I've seen sooo many people just hold the camera still and try to get the moving object in the frames. Its impossible.
Years ago, I used to worm my way to the infield of the speedway circuits. I started taking shots of riders and they sold well. Then a bloke gave me a good tip. Find out who sponsors each rider and try to get that rider in full flight in front of the sponsors advertising sign.
I used to make heaps selling the shots to the sponsor as well as the rider
I used to have access to a 600 canon lens and I took it to many race tracks including Phillip Is. And Eastern Creek
What a monster to lug around all day. But they have 2 x prefocus settings which s very useful

Re: Tips for Motorsport pics - Panning shots

Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:46 am
by Angry
Forgot to say I used a 200/400 film lense on the Digital that works out to 600...nothing like a long lense, the shortest reasonable length youll get away with might be 300, or if youv got a 70./200 with a doubler would work.

forget using 50mm , unless its a close up shot of something in the pits ,.,& that will probably het you in trouble with a team

Also need to forget about how many shots , just blast away set the shutter for the highest firing rate you can get.

Re: Tips for Motorsport pics - Panning shots

Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 12:04 pm
by nomad
Angry wrote:
Also need to forget about how many shots , just blast away set the shutter for the highest firing rate you can get.
Thats the beauty of digital. in the old days it used cost a small fortune. now just bang away all day
i use several sd cards instead of one high capacity one. i killed a shiteload of photos when my sd card died at one race meeting. download and backup often. :cry: