Knockhill SIDC day 11th November

[therossatron]

First proper outing with my new 400D. Tamron 70 - 300mm lens used for all of them.

My main problem was getting sharp shots while also keeping the sensation of speed. Advice/tips/abuse welcome! Although it was a Subaru Impreza day these shots are all Lotus


















p.s could a kind mod delete the other thread that I screwed up royally! cheers!

[poah]

use AI focus, use custom function 4 to switch the focus control to the AE lock button (this means the camera only meters when you depress the shutter button), use EC to make your pics brighter, and increase your shutter speed till you get more practice. got a couple of decent pans there though although a bit dark. I tended to use centre weighed metering and +2/3 to +1 EC on Saturday and I took lots of pics lol

[therossatron]

Cheers Poah! Noted! I was using one shot focus at first and then changed it later on when I sussed it was only focusing on the first shot ("one shot" should have been the give away I suppose ). Thought not sure what I changed it to! I'm gonna look like an idiot and ask what EC is? Exposure control?

I found the changing light was messing with the pics especially when it cleared up and all of a sudden the track became a bright white mirror!

[poah]

for panning you have it set to TV. so say you get a reading of 1/80 f5.6. if you dial in +1 EC then the camera will take the picture at 1/80s f4. so what you are doing is overexposing what the camera thinks is the best exposure for the frame. the wet track causes a lot of light to be reflected so the camera thinks its brighter so uses a smaller aperture to let less light in thus making the cars dark. by dialing in +EC we can compensate.

Edited by poah on Tuesday 14th November 11:54

[theRossatron]

Cool think I finally understand what thats for now cheers!

Here's some more from the day. First one is still a bit dark, but its sharp. Tried to adjust the levels a bit but not to huge success.

[fergusd]

theRossatron said:

Cool think I finally understand what thats for now cheers!

Here's some more from the day. First one is still a bit dark, but its sharp. Tried to adjust the levels a bit but not to huge success.

If it's sharp when does his tax run out ?

You need to sort exposure as a number on priority, whatever you are doing is underexposing everything. Quite unusual to see things so generally underexposed, I'd have thought any modern cam would get it mucg better than that . . . underexposure will cause very noisy images if you try to bring the exposure up in post-processing (Photochop or similar).

Once you understand the exposure problem . . .

Pick a corner with a regular supply of cars and pick shutter priority . . .

Then take 20 pics at a shutter speed of, say 30th all the way to 500th (30th, 60th, 125th, etc) and ignore the aperture . . . try to pan the camera the same every time at all shutter speeds . . .

Go home and look at all the pictures in detail . . .

At what point to they actually start getting sharp - and is the background and wheels still blurred . . . actually sharp means you can read the tax disk on the image above . . .

At this point you now know what is your personal shutter speed for that corner . . . and you'll start to get a feel for how that will work at other corners - and it's relation to focal length and speed of car . . . Of course if you need 1/2000th of a second you probably need some valium to steady the old hands . . .

As time progresses and with practice you will find that you can probably pan at lower and lower shutter speeds and get it right more often . . .

Of course that's all pointless if everything is underexposed . . .

I would mention shooting in RAW however the exposure problem needs sorted on the camera/brain before you even go there . . .

$0.02

Fd

Edited by fergusd on Wednesday 15th November 01:26

[Rag_It]

Hey guys, you will find me where ever there is good photography advice right now, as my newbie DSLR is coming for Xmas.

Is it also fair to say that whilst i can see most of Ross' pictures are underexposed, that the 400d has been getting pretty hellish reviews about the fact that, unlike the 350d, it prefers to underexpose every shot.

Rightly or wrongly, and I have been looking at the Canon 400d and the Sony A100, and i am at the moment plumping for the Sony. Also due to the fact their is some really good glass out their in the shape of KM lenses which fit with their A- mount.

Cannot wait to post my results after week 1, have been playing with the wifes SLR pentax and have produced some really shocking images!

Cheers,

Dave

[therossatron]

Thanks for the pointers Fergus. I suppose there is "sharp" and then "sharp for me" Are all my shots underexposed or just the one you quoted?

I slightly altered the contrast and used the photoshop autolevels thing - perhaps to negative effect?

Thinking back i did adjust the Ev+/- thing at first (, but the light changed and I might have left it like that by accident. Dave - I'd love to blame the camera but it was probably something i did!

Edited by therossatron on Wednesday 15th November 11:33

[therossatron]

fergusd said:

theRossatron said:

Cool think I finally understand what thats for now cheers!

Here's some more from the day. First one is still a bit dark, but its sharp. Tried to adjust the levels a bit but not to huge success.

If it's sharp when does his tax run out ?

11/06 ? couldn't resist

[poah]

all the canons seem to underexpose normally (can't vouch for 1d series though)

Rag_It said:

Hey guys, you will find me where ever there is good photography advice right now, as my newbie DSLR is coming for Xmas.

Is it also fair to say that whilst i can see most of Ross' pictures are underexposed, that the 400d has been getting pretty hellish reviews about the fact that, unlike the 350d, it prefers to underexpose every shot.

Rightly or wrongly, and I have been looking at the Canon 400d and the Sony A100, and i am at the moment plumping for the Sony. Also due to the fact their is some really good glass out their in the shape of KM lenses which fit with their A- mount.

Cannot wait to post my results after week 1, have been playing with the wifes SLR pentax and have produced some really shocking images!

Cheers,

Dave