What techniques make for good motorsport shots?

I tried going for fast shutter speed (thinking because it's fast moving action...) but that just left me with unnatural looking photos, the cars, even the wheels are freeze frame. It's not obvious they're even in motion. Don't like this technique.

Keeping with shutter priority i tried longer shutter times and moving the camera with the car. I was aiming for blurred background and wheels, but crystal clear car. All i got was everything blurred -- i'm not skilful enough for this technique yet, but i'll keep practicing.

Are there any other techniques i could try? Trying to dream up how to use aperture priority for creative shots but i can't think how, other than using the knowledge that smaller fstop = faster shutter, effectively thinking in shutter priority.

What other motorsport techniques are there?

HI!

whenever i have done anything i prettymuch only used shutter priority and stayed around the 100- 180 mark (with touring cars anyway, found bikes alot quicker so harder to keep up ). once i find a place to shoot from i pick a spot where i think i want to capture the car/bike/whatever and then as it comes along match the speed and pan with it and set up your shot then click the shutter when you get to your point. throwing some angle on the frame can also add a little drama to the shot. also bikes are quite alot harder than cars! smaller size and a fair bit faster!

what camera are you using? i tip i got was to change the focus button from the shutter to the * button (canon 40D). that way can have the shutter half depressed and choose to focus when you need to, made the whole process much smoother. also when you have the shot in mind, choose where in the frame you want to have the picture in focus and choose the individual focus point in the viewfinder, saves the camera having to think about it and choose whichever it finds suitible (which is generally the wrong one )

its hard if you dont have press acess to find locations where you can cleanly pan without any fences/people etc in the way and it very frustrating :( having Image stabiliser also helps quite alot!

heres afew of mine with this technique Canon 40D and 70-200 f2.8 IS

160th

1600th f2.8

125th

320th

Edited 9 May, 201016 yr by benh199

A cute blonde spread eagle across the bonnet!!!

HTH?

ha yeah that too!

what is HTH??

i forgot to say but in the supermoto photo, second picture down i was using aperature priority and the lowest stop i could, giving some bokeh (blur befor and after the focal point) to draw attention to the rider out against foreground and background. you can use this pretty effectively if thier coming towards you like that and want to make someone stand out more than another!

for example a group of tour'ers coming into a shicane, one guy clipping the apex and getting it on two wheels and the other cars are blurred whilst hes lovely n crisp. the intense shutter speed would mean you captured if perfectly if your quick enough on the button :p

Edited 9 May, 201016 yr by benh199

Many thanks for sharing those pictures Ben, and your experience! The angle in the first touring car shot really does add to that picture and the blurring effect is exactly what i was after.

Interesting idea with the depth of field, i'm going to give that a whirl.

Many thanks for sharing those pictures Ben, and your experience! The angle in the first touring car shot really does add to that picture and the blurring effect is exactly what i was after.

Interesting idea with the depth of field, i'm going to give that a whirl.

my pleasure what motorsport were you attending? BTCC was my favourite although i definatly want to get to DTM at brands when that comes around! next month im doing motocross and cant wait :p

the panning just takes some practice keep at it! start with a quicker shutter speed till you get your eye in and then gradually keep knocking the speed down! if you have a canon do try changing the focus buttons around and have a play, its the only way i shoot now and wouldnt ever go back!

Wife doing her old showroom display. LOL

Generally as low a shutter speed as you can get away with depending on the speed of the action, panning with the action and preferably as low as possible for the shot angle. You also need to consider the angle of movement in relation to you. If the vehicles are coming towards you low shutter speed and panning doesn't work. In that case I often pre focus on a spot. Racing vehicles are fairly predictable and generally take the same lines through corners lap after lap so pre focussing does work.

If you have to shoot through a wire mesh fence the only real option that will work is a fast (f2.8) lens at f2.8 manually focussed on the spot where the vehicle will be in the photo. At that aperture the mesh will hardly show in the photo, if at all and by manually focussing you won't have the problem of the camera deciding to focus on the mesh at the wrong moment.

Then get out and shoot thousands of shots practising.

1/125 sec. Bike doing about 70-80 kph around 10 metres from me.

Valentino Rossi @ 300kph at 1/500 sec. Breaks the low angle rule but rules are made to be broken.

If you can get on the inside of a corner where the vehicles are effectively rotating around you that helps with the panning shots as the focus distance doesn't change as much. 1/1250 sec at over 150kph

1/1000 sec. I was trying to get the distortion in the rear tyres hence the higher shutter speed.

This is actually an old scanned film shot from around 1979. I used to always use 1/125 sec and pre focus in those days. There were no auto focus lenses.

You can also go the opposite way. Here is a 1/200 f8 shot where I held the camera still and got the bike at around 300kph.

Edited 10 May, 201016 yr by K1W1

Generally as low a shutter speed as you can get away with depending on the speed of the action, panning with the action and preferably as low as possible for the shot angle. You also need to consider the angle of movement in relation to you. If the vehicles are coming towards you low shutter speed and panning doesn't work. In that case I often pre focus on a spot. Racing vehicles are fairly predictable and generally take the same lines through corners lap after lap so pre focussing does work.

This is very important and a lesson I learnt the hard way, for action shots I was mainly used to shooting my fast moving spaniel where super high shutter speeds worked well in completing freezing the motion of the dog and the water he was normally in. When I used the same technique for shooting at the race track though it was a disaster, this is a fast Porsche at the Nurburgring:

The high shutter speed just makes it look like it was parked on the track, a much lower shutter speed works far better if you can pan the camera with the car:

John

my pleasure what motorsport were you attending?

BTCC doesn't come up this way till after the summer but i'll be there. Meantime i want to put together some interesting ideas in my collection of bits and bobs.

Really what im preparing for is some promo shots of a track car i'll be trying to seek sponsorship of.

JohnMcL7 -- i have a photoalbum full of shots of parked cars in the middle of a track like your porsche