Discussion
Thought I'd try and beat the weather and goto the FIA GT racing at Silverstone on Saturday. Arrived in glorious sunshine, so much so I got sun burnt, and then by lunchtime, rain, rain and more rain. Anyway good racing, the rain some what scuppered my plans to wander the whole circuit and paddocks, but what I saw was great racing. It's incredible having been for the F1 test day a couple of weeks ago how relatively 'slow' the Ferraris and Masseratis were around the track, I'm sure the drivers thought it was anything but slow, especially in driving rain. Anyway here's a few of the ones I liked:
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GCerbera said:
Great photos - may I ask what camera you used?
Thanks, Nikon D70 with a Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 lens with a 1.4 teleconverter on it for all the pictures.
ShadyTree said:
rhubarb, nice pics mate. How do you create your borders in Photoshop? They definitely make the pictures stand out.
Thanks too, actually they're added in PSP 9 at the moment, still learning PS, but when I've done them in the past in PS IIRC I've chosen background colour of white, then increased the canvas size by 2 pixels making sure the original image is centred, which gives a small white border, then done the same process with black at 50 pixels. In PSP it's just scripted to add borders of the same dimension. Hope to find a way to script it in PS, but haven't got that far through the book yet.
Adding borders was something I picked up from a landscape course my wife went on in the Peak District, they said they help to bring out the image, and looking at two of her shots, one with and one without, the bordered one always looks better (IMO). Bit of a bugger on here though as it reduces the image soize, but at A3 size they do look good - the borders that is not nessicarily my snaps
rhubarb said:
the rain some what scuppered my plans to wander the whole circuit
Excellent set of photo's. As said above the borders really help but you still need a good photo to start with!!
I went to the LMES GT's there last year when the race ran until after 10pm. It rained so much and visibility was so poor after dark that the race was almost red flagged. I covered myself and Goretex and made the effort to walk the circuit; it was well worth it to see the cars trying to slow down at the end of Hangar Straight where at one point they were even spinning while BEHIND the safety car
!! Longers
>> Edited by longers on Tuesday 9th May 13:50
Thanks for the comments guys, feel quite chuffed now 
Did a bit of experimenting, most were 1/125, but went down as low as 1/60 but they weren't too good. I was trying to get the effect of something dead in focus and sharp eg the number, and the rest of the car and background blurred, which is a lot more difficult than I thought. The 3/4 ones were perhaps a bit quicker, all of the EXIF should still be intact though.
dobbo said:
what shutter speeds you using - 1/125?
Did a bit of experimenting, most were 1/125, but went down as low as 1/60 but they weren't too good. I was trying to get the effect of something dead in focus and sharp eg the number, and the rest of the car and background blurred, which is a lot more difficult than I thought. The 3/4 ones were perhaps a bit quicker, all of the EXIF should still be intact though.
They are really nice pics, rhubarb, especially the two yellows (Corvette and Gallardo).
I've been mucking about with shutter speeds more this season on my D70. I'd been sticking to low speeds (1/125 or so) last year and while the results were, on the whole, fairly pleasing, I wasn't always happy with the sharpness of the car. After looking at the exif data on some of the motorsport photographers websites (TSU, especially, are my favourites) I saw they were going up to 1/320 and 1/400 and still getting some motion effect on their backgrounds, and the cars were still nice and sharp. I've since been trying this and have been pleased with the photos produced.
That's the great thing about photography; you seem to learn something new everytime you pick up the camera!
Incidentally, if you haven't seen my pics from the weekend on the motorsport forum (and you're interested!) they're here.
FIA GT Tourist Trophy
FIA GT3 Sunday race
I've been mucking about with shutter speeds more this season on my D70. I'd been sticking to low speeds (1/125 or so) last year and while the results were, on the whole, fairly pleasing, I wasn't always happy with the sharpness of the car. After looking at the exif data on some of the motorsport photographers websites (TSU, especially, are my favourites) I saw they were going up to 1/320 and 1/400 and still getting some motion effect on their backgrounds, and the cars were still nice and sharp. I've since been trying this and have been pleased with the photos produced.
That's the great thing about photography; you seem to learn something new everytime you pick up the camera!
Incidentally, if you haven't seen my pics from the weekend on the motorsport forum (and you're interested!) they're here.
FIA GT Tourist Trophy
FIA GT3 Sunday race
. Esp love number 3, it almost looks as if the car is braking through the sound barrier with the way the rain is bouncing off the front of it!Gassing Station | Photography & Video | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff