motorsport lenses?

[itannum990]

Got a d3100, a nikon 15-55 (i think) lens with vibration reduction, and a cheapo 70-300 without VR.

Both of which seem useless capturing fast things at a distance. Much of which is attributable to me obviously.

Looking for a non remortgagey priced lens that will work better, if possible?

I see guys with huge white coated lenses at most circuits. They look viciously expensive.

[covboy]

A lot can depend on your expectations. A 300mm lens would be generally OK for a large proportion of Motorsports stuff – It’s just a case of finding the best locations and honing your technique

[ManFromDelmonte]

The Nikon 70-300mm with VR is probably your best bet. I think I paid around £380 new for mine but you could get one for less second hand.

A lot of the answers will be in your technique though rather than a magic lens.

[SlidingSideways]

300mm should be fine. It starts getting pricey as you search for anything longer than that.
VR/IS isn't generally much use for motorsport shots as you'll be moving with the cars, and fighting the stabilisers that are trying to steady the lens

As per the post above, technique and finding suitable locations to shoot from are the biggest bits to master.

Some tips:
- Practice. Test and track days are a good place to do this as they are cheap.
- Make sure your AF is set to continuous (AI-SERVO on canon, not sure what Nikon call it). Half press the shutter button to start focussing and follow the car until you get the shot you want and then press the shutter fully.
- Select a single focus point to use, preferably the centre one as it will be the most accurate, and keep it over the numbers/decals on the car as you follow it.
- Practice
- Make sure your shutter speeds are appropriate (and shoot in shutter priority to make sure you control this). As you get better, start dropping the shutter speeds so you get background blur etc...
- Continuous/burst shooting can help to start with. Look at each image in the burst and see which you think looks the best. Then aim for that shot each time
- Look at what's happening on track and spot the interesting stuff going on. Some corners cars will cock a wheel, hop over the kerb, kick up dust or shoot flames from the exhaust. This can be fairly consistent lap after lap so you will get a few attempts to catch it. It's a much better photo than just the side of a car.
- Did I mention practice?

Which tracks do you tend to visit? I'll provide some decent locations if I've been before.

Edited by SlidingSideways on Tuesday 14th April 10:29

[Dan_1981]

I find my cheapo 70-300 isn't bad at all for motorsport stuff.

Not much cop in low light but really not bad at all on a nice bright day

[mike80]

Often I found the best thing to do with the slower / cheaper lenses was to prefocus and practice timing your shot when the car is in the focused area. This is how I taught myself with a bridge style camera 10 years or so ago!

[Nigel_O]

I'm just starting out on a very steep photography learning curve, but I landed lucky on a Sigma 50-500 for my Nikon 5200 - great for the bigger modern circuits where the spectator area is a long way back from the track - bloody heavy to use hand-held though, so I've lashed out on a decent monopod to save my puny little biceps....

The alternative is to practice at some of the many hillclimbs / sprints - you can get much closer to the action and the technique is very similar

[itannum990]

Very helpful responses indeed thanks people.

Technique, yes without doubt I am not good. Not helped by often not being without a beer at such events!

What I have found with the 70-300 lens, is that it will need prefocussing at a point of the circuit before the car or bike gets there, as it has no chance otherwise. Tracking/burst shots are out of the question. With the shorter lens I can follow a car through a bend or up a strip but obviously I can only crop so much before effort is wasted.

So VR is not a magic photo fairy then? I assumed that was why almost all my longer lens shots are blurry or shaky, and the shorter lens sharp..

[itannum990]

@slidingsideways - nice post, worth printing out! Don't think that I desire any longer than 300 anyway. I gather, the longer the lens the trickier the shot?

brands hatch and santa pod are where I seem to spend a lot of time, going to Le Mans this year (soooo bloody excited!) So it would be nice to have a higher photographic success rate than I managed at last year's TT haha

[mike80]

itannum990 said:

So VR is not a magic photo fairy then? I assumed that was why almost all my longer lens shots are blurry or shaky, and the shorter lens sharp..

Depends what shutter speed you are using - also practice is needed for the longer lens stuff!

[SlidingSideways]

Which exact 70-300 do you have? It would probably have to be quite ancient not to be able to track a car on track. As mentioned, if it really is struggling then you can always pre-focus on the point you want and then knock it into manual focus to fix it there.
The camera should be well up to the task, my 7 year old 450D is.

The secret to good motorsport shots is movement. If the shot doesn't have that, it just looks like a car parked up on some tarmac. You obviously want the car nice and sharp, so the trick is to track with the car so that the background blurs and gives that sense of movement.
So for pretty much every kind of shot, bar head/tail ons, you need to track the car with your camera.

There's a pretty good tutorial here: http://www.thephotoargus.com/tips/an-introduction-...

Try it on slower corners first, it will be much quicker to get the hang of that than trying to catch cars flying by on a straight.

itannum990 said:

brands hatch and santa pod <snip> Le Mans

Not places I've been to I'm afraid, so can't really help with locations. Try to find spots without high fencing, the inside of corners are usually better for this. You can normally spot these fairly easily as they will have clusters of blokes with what look like missile launchers congregating around them

[SlidingSideways]

itannum990 said:

So VR is not a magic photo fairy then? I assumed that was why almost all my longer lens shots are blurry or shaky, and the shorter lens sharp..

It has it's uses, but not generally for motorsport shots as you're moving the lens anyway and the VR will try to fight that. Some lenses have a panning mode which can be useful, but only really if you're panning totally horizontally.

The main reason that your shots aren't as good is probably down to technique. There's an old rule that your shutter speed should be equal to your focal length, so 1/1oo at 100mm, 1/200 at 200mm, 1/300 at 300mm etc... in order to get sharp shots. Useful for photos of static things, but not so much when you're trying to deliberately use slower shutters to get motion blur.

The optics in your longer lens won't be as good as your shorter lens either. Shots will typically be better if you can stop down a bit (use a smaller aperture, so F/8 rather than F/5.6 for example) and avoid either end of the zoom range (try only going to 280mm and see if they're any better, you can always crop the image tighter if needed)

Reading your other posts, if you're going to upgrade your lens, the Nikon 70-300 sounds like a good bet, but for the better optics and SWM focussing (much faster than older, cheaper motorised lenses) rather than specifically for the VR.

Edited by SlidingSideways on Tuesday 14th April 14:05

[Simpo Two]

itannum990 said:

What I have found with the 70-300 lens, is that it will need prefocussing at a point of the circuit before the car or bike gets there, as it has no chance otherwise. Tracking/burst shots are out of the question. With the shorter lens I can follow a car through a bend or up a strip but obviously I can only crop so much before effort is wasted.

So VR is not a magic photo fairy then? I assumed that was why almost all my longer lens shots are blurry or shaky, and the shorter lens sharp..

There are two things here. One is camera shake, which VR can help to deal with, and the other is focusing accuracy (both in acquiring the subject and then in tracking it as the distance changes). That requires teamwork bewteen the lens and the body. The lens has to be able to focus fast enough (AF-S) and the body has to be good enough to tell it where to focus. I suspect your issue is partly technique but also the limitations of an entry level body - which may not have the AF capability you need.

That said, manual prefocus is a perfectly good method; how many photos do you want?

[SlidingSideways]

Simpo Two said:

but also the limitations of an entry level body - which may not have the AF capability you need.

Is that likely to be the case?
OK, the AF won't be up to the same standard as the pro bodies, but surely it would be up to the job of tracking a car moving in a predictable path along a single plane? I've seen good moving target shots from folks using old 350/400Ds so surely a modern body, even an entry level one, should be able to manage it?

[eltawater]

At the moment we don't know what the OP's 70-300 is. AFAIK Nikon didn't sell a 70-300 without VR and with a focus motor.

So either the OP is manually focusing an old 70-300 AF on a D3100, or it's a cheaper Sigma/Tamron with not so good capabilities....

[Simpo Two]

SlidingSideways said:

Is that likely to be the case?

I've no idea for certain, but it might be a factor. The closing speed of a racing car is going to be very fast and if the AF is a few yards behind, with a long lens it'll be out of focus.

But technique and making sure he's got the right AF settings would be a good (and free) start.

I presume he's got the shutter speed right for the effect he wants.

[itannum990]

eltawater said:

At the moment we don't know what the OP's 70-300 is. AFAIK Nikon didn't sell a 70-300 without VR and with a focus motor.

So either the OP is manually focusing an old 70-300 AF on a D3100, or it's a cheaper Sigma/Tamron with not so good capabilities....

Tamron af 70-300 1:4-5.6

Came dirt cheap with the body and Nikon af-s nikkor 18-55 1:35-5.6G (what does G mean?)

[Simpo Two]

eltawater said:

At the moment we don't know what the OP's 70-300 is. AFAIK Nikon didn't sell a 70-300 without VR and with a focus motor.

ED: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/70300af.htm

itannum990 said:

(what does G mean?)

No aperture ring - aperture is controlled from the camera body.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/nikortek.htm

Apols for the two Rockwell links but they explain it quite well.

[ukaskew]

If you're concentrating on panning mainly there is little reason to go really expensive in my experience, it's the head-on sort of stuff where big fast lens comes into its own, but technique is still key. Even AF isn't that big a deal if you're shooting fairly slow shutter speeds, I'm often at f16-20 when panning, so AF is a distant second to technique.

I wrote a motorsport guide with my Fuji stuff, consider that many of these are taken with a Fuji X-E1 and 55-200, the X-E1 doesn't even have a proper continuous AF mode but in practice it was still no different to when I was shooting with a 'professional' set-up

http://www.chrisharrisonphotography.com/fuji-x-blo...

Or to look at it in more conventional DSLR terms...

Canon 1100D and Tamron 70-300 (full system put together for less than £300)

IMG_1104 by Harry_S, on Flickr

IMG_1280 by Harry_S, on Flickr

or (from exactly the same public positions at my local circuit) with £2.5k of kit including a Sigma 120-300mm 2.8...

Castle Combe Springtime Raceday by Harry_S, on Flickr

Audi RS4 - CC Performance Day by Harry_S, on Flickr

It sounds a bit idealistic, and of course when you get really serious about it the big fast expensive kit really has it's place, but there is very little you can't achieve with practice with the most basic of gear, and in motorsport in my experience there are no shortcuts.

One thing I'm quite passionate about is ditching the notion of using the machine gun approach with the 8fps or whatever it is DSLRs can manage these days, it might bag a few shots but if you're shooting for pleasure it's not really teaching you anything. Pretty much everything I've ever shot has been Single Shot and I practiced week in week out, shooting at 1/30 or even slower is now pretty straightforward, which opens up a lot of creative opportunities I don't think I would ever have managed if I didn't learn the hard way.

Edited by ukaskew on Tuesday 14th April 19:29

[Turn7]

If the cheapo zoom is screwdrive then you will never get the AF to focus fast enough is my experience.

I use a Nikkor 70-300 and that seems to work well enough.