Why are there so few car photographs?

[LongQ]

Janesy B said:

bobski1 said:

Great panning shots, especially the civic nose to bumper shot.

Any tips for a newbie?

Practice, loads

This .... but also ....

Starting out, for relatively high speed objects like cars in motor sport, look for a location where you have a constant radius curve which the subject is travelling at a relatively constant speed and you are some distance away rather than right on top of the subject.

This will give you some feel for the concept and one can expect some satisfying results to deliver confidence. You are also unlikely to be pushing the camera's competence too much. As you follow the subject you will be panning at a constant (ish) speed.

If you then move on to panning a subject passing you in a straight line (rather than a curve) you will find a different technique is required with a variable speed of pan which makes it more challenging to keep the subject focus point in one place in line with the speed. In addition if you are quite close to the subject and the subject is large (the length of a car rather than a human for example) the relative movement of the different parts of the subject will likely mean that not all of is it sharp especially when using quite a slow shutter speed to enhance the appearance of movement.

If you are on the outside of a curve along which the subject will pass then you have all of the fun of the straight line challenge and a much shorter opportunity to make a capture that will look anything like right.

Depending on your lens collection and capability along with whatever features you camera body offers you may need to modify your approach. However even for limited equipment (in terms of modern highly featured kit) there is always some potential to go into "manual mode", turn off auto focus, preset a manual focus point, set your speed and aperture and simply take the shot when the subject you are following reaches the point for which you have focused. (Assuming that they ever do!)

[6pi]

dinkel said:

Lovely. More of that?

Thanks.

[RenesisEvo]

pidsy said:

Was also at Blancpain on Sunday

I was there also, great day it was. Took way too many photos, all in RAW, so it will be a little while before I process them all and can share.

[pidsy]

RenesisEvo said:

pidsy said:

Was also at Blancpain on Sunday

I was there also, great day it was. Took way too many photos, all in RAW, so it will be a little while before I process them all and can share.

I took about 600.
Binned half of them on review. Minor edits, binned lots more.

Couple of nights editing and kept about 30.

Thinking of going back for the nascars on the 12th.

[V8A*ndy]

6pi said:

dinkel said:

Lovely. More of that?

Thanks.

Lovely....

[Top Banana]

Ken Figenus said:

bobski1 said:

Great panning shots, especially the civic nose to bumper shot.

Any tips for a newbie?

Make your shutter speed the same as its mph if moving with subject - and then lower from there...at your peril. Jon can comment on his super crisp static position panning shots technique! I suspect it will also include 'ditch all the soft shots' - as we all get them

Great tip on the shutter speed that will always get you in the ballpark for the right setting - then it's just fine tuning by adjusting shutter speed to get the sharpness wanted (also keeping an eye on ISO and aperture as required)

Also try different focus settings - mostly I go with AF-C and 7 point focus. Also I use back button focus so that you can control the shutter better, and tend to shoot high speed burst (7 x RAW shots a second).

for panning it's just lots of practice on technique with concentration of smoothly tracking the subject, this is much easier on constant radius corners (inside of Druids at Brands Hatch is a great place to practice)

Even with all the above the keeper rate at higher speed corners and straights can sometimes be only 50% so dont be surprised if you end up ditching a lot of shots but that's the beauty of digital... :-)

Regards - Jon

[stephalt]

Long time, no post. A few from last year, my flickr is a tad outdated.


BMW E30 by Steph Clarke, on Flickr

[RenesisEvo]

pidsy said:

RenesisEvo said:

pidsy said:

Was also at Blancpain on Sunday

I was there also, great day it was. Took way too many photos, all in RAW, so it will be a little while before I process them all and can share.

I took about 600.
Binned half of them on review. Minor edits, binned lots more.

I see your 600 and raise you 1400 (spread cross 3 memory cards)! I spent a bit of time practising panning with different shutter speeds, so I suspect there will be many going in the bin. Two years before I had use of a 70-200mm f2.8, rather miss it but there was plenty of light for my own 75-300 to work (in fact an ND filter would have helped taking the shutter speed even lower, with inevitably even more useless frames).

[Martyboy84]

Focus RS MK3 by Martin McKillop, on Flickr

Focus RS MK3 by Martin McKillop, on Flickr

Focus RS MK3 by Martin McKillop, on Flickr

[kman]

A few shots with a friend's Audi, practising doing some motion rig stuff

Audi A6 motion rig shot

Audi A6

Audi A6 motion rig shot

[cteagles]

[V8A*ndy]

Identification needed please.

IMG_8067 by Imagine Sky, on Flickr

[tp81]

[tp81]

[LongQ]

V8A*ndy said:

Identification needed please.

IMG_8067 by Imagine Sky, on Flickr

An Austin 7 replica. Something like an EB65 Sports.

The Reg number appears on a list here:

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=...


However it does not identify exactly what the car is or from what it may originate. I mention that in case you already knew it was a & replica and wanted identity for the specific source of the replica.

[jayemm89]

You just know some days are going to be good ones...

Took this while filming for my new YouTube channel, centred around the Lotus. (Channel is at www.jayemm.com)

[Japveesix]

Martyboy84 said:

Focus RS MK3 by Martin McKillop, on Flickr

I think I saw this car in Inverness on Saturday (could be wrong). First new RS I've seen and I think it looks brilliant, I quite like the rather subtle aggressiveness of it.

[rich888]

Some great photos on here especially the Lancia in the perfect setting.

And on that note was waiting to cross the road yesterday with the tribe when I spotted this classic Rolls Royce driving towards me so just managed to fire off a couple of shots before it was gone, and I was mad as hell that I chopped off a little bit of the front of the bumper but it all happened so quick!

Lovely car nevertheless.

[Rogue86]

Tokyo by Graham Taylor, on Flickr

[Sko77y]

Recent from me, lovely S2000:
www.facebook.com/SBReidPhotography

S2000 by Scott Reid, on Flickr