So I took a TON of shots today at the Nopi Nationals supershow and a lot of them ended up pretty bland. I was shooting way too fast I guess and almost every shot turned a drag car going 140+ mph into a random car sitting on a drag strip.
I did get some decent shots of the Nopi girls, but even those were just kinda ehhh. My 55-300 isnt particularly sharp, but I was able to get up close and personal from quite a distance.

So, what shutter speed is better to capture racing without making everything look static or too blurry. It was so sunny I couldnt really review my shots so pretty much all of the action shots I took were boring.

Heres a link to my flickr if anyone cares to look
http://www.flickr.com/photos/80627774@N06/


examples:
This bike was probably getting close to 80 by this point and it looks like its standing still


These guys were moving pretty quick too


The biggest let down was the drifting photos. They were so static looking.

The girl shots were ok though, I just wish I had a better telephoto. Although they made it hard to get good shots. It was heavy sun but the girls were partially shaded until they walked way out. And I was shooting between peoples heads so theres that too.



This post was edited by AXIS on Sep 22 2013 11:19pm

There are some techniques, and it's going to depend on your distance from the subject (I think?). I've never done this, but again, I've watched videos.

One of the techniques is keeping a certain shutter speed (say 1/50), and following your subject with the camera. This will blur everything except for the car. I'm not exactly sure how shutter speed should be calculated when doing this, might take practice (1/50 might be too slow, just throwing a number out there).

That's the only input I have. There's probably a tonnnn more to know.

Nice photos (of the girls)

This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Sep 22 2013 11:21pm

I took about 600 pics total. Edited and kinda liked about 60. Of those 60 probably 45 are girls....
I cant decide if Im happy about that or not, lol.


I think part of my problem was that I started the day with my iso on 400 because a few clouds came in and then I never dropped it down so I was shooting at like 3200 or 4000 shutter speeds for some of the super bright shots. I was pretty far away so I was shooting with my 55-300 which was awesome for closing that distance gap. I really wasnt focusing heavily on taking my time and getting it right I guess.


edit: pro-tip, if you look at the pics on flickr and right click and view original size, you can look REALLY closely at the girls. Kinda neat how detailed it is considering a was a good 50+ feet back. Girl with the blue bikini has a couple cool scars if you look closely

This post was edited by AXIS on Sep 22 2013 11:36pm

One thing I've learned is that it's important to pick a skill that you want to improve upon, and go out and improve on that skill for the day. Otherwise, if you just go out to shoot, it's a toss-up if your photos will turn out the way you want them if you don't know what you're doing entirely in the first place.

I went out to shoot part of the seawall in Vancouver a few weeks ago, and what happened for me was 1) my girlfriend screwed things up and kept forcing me to put my camera away, but more importantly 2) I didn't come with a plan. I just snapped a few shots of my girlfriend (and I got a couple amazing shots out of the day since I already know how to do portraiture with what I have currently), but the other shots I snapped sucked. I didn't get good landscape shots at all, and I didn't get any interesting walk-around shots. What I should've done is a few HDR shots, and a couple long-exposure shots with a portable tripod when it got around to night-time; I should've planned that out, and figured out before-hand what sort of composure would make those types of shots work.

The same thing translates for your event. You could've looked up race photography, and shown up with a plan. Then maybe 200 or so of your shots would've been you practicing that, and you might've ended up with 20 or so nice shots of race cars/etc.

That's my philosophy anyway. I've walked out the door and done some terrible photography, and I've learned that I need to build a plan. If I learn something new every time I head out, eventually walk-arounds will become a lot more interesting since I'll have practiced a number of different things. Just a thought.

[edit]: Remember, with that strategy where you lower your shutter speed and follow your subject, you *might* be able to drop your aperture down to f8 or something like that in order to get a sharper shot (since your lens might not be as sharp wide open). I don't know if that sort of photography demands a wider aperture to blur the out of focus area or not, but it's a thought. You might be able to 'cheat' out a bit of a sharper image.

This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Sep 22 2013 11:40pm

Ive done a few of the panning shots before with slower stuff (like a bird flying by) and had nice results.
I guess I kind of figured the cars would be moving so quick that the wheels would at least still be blurred a good bit.

I think my main problem was just being distracted, which was kinda more of the reason I was there anyways (to enjoy the show).
Next year should result any lots of better photos though!


edit: Just flipped through some of the photos on my camera again and I was definitely panning with the cars on several of the runs but apparently just shooting way too fast.

This post was edited by AXIS on Sep 22 2013 11:47pm

Here's a quick example of how you can photoshop your images and really spend some time fixing them up.

I did this in a quick 5 minutes (if I spent say... 60 minutes, the results could be perfect). What I've done here is just an example (it's obviously a quick job and not done with 100% finesse). Just select what you need to (can take some time to do it correctly), get the inverse selection, and then motion blur the crap out of the image. I'm sure more can be done than what I've said beyond just carefully selecting and applying a single motion blur.

The same sort of detail and fixes can be applied to any image (landscape, action, whatever). Once you're done in lightroom fixing up the general RAW photo, and once you're done with your brushes in lightroom, you can move on to Photoshop to do a lot more.



This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Sep 23 2013 01:14am

did you pan any of the shots? or just wait till they got in focus and shot?

Both, but even the ones that I did pan on I guess I was shooting WAY to fast and there was no blur.
I bumped my iso up to 400 early in the day and forgot about it so most of my shots were at 1/3200 or faster.

usually you guess the speed of what you are taking a picture of thats your x and dial in your camera a shutterspeed of 1 / X ...
soo if the car goes 100 km / h you choose 1 / 100 sek. for a bike for example the exposure time has to be much linger 30 km / h should be a 1 / 30 sek....

it might take a few tries though, since you will have to move your camera in the same direction the car / bike is going and your shot will look a little blurry and not 100% sharp! thats quite usual
please dont use photoshop and motion blur... it sucks..

thanks.