Well I hope everyone had as awesome a weekend as I did.

I learned a few things this weekend.

1 - never take a 3 year old to the track and expect to get a lot of shooting in
2 - never take an 8 month old to the track and expect to get ANY shooting done
3 - NASCAR events are AWESOME live!
4 - Never leave your equipment on your desk and drive 500 miles to shoot. (see DOH! thread lol)

Anyway .. without much further ado.. here's some of the better shots I got on Saturday.

Taking a Peek -
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/6466/a123394wk3.jpg

Zoom!! - I tried something a bit different on this shot. I held the focus on the back drop and waited for my frame to arrive. It took me 27 laps to get him framed just right... but once I did it was worth the wait.. and the attempts.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8646/a123460fj1.jpg

Smoke Show take 1 - After a hard fought race trading paint right to the finish line this was a well deserved celebration.....even if it was Kurt Busch...(at least he beat Robbie Gordon)
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/3964/a123472061508bn9.jpg

Smoke Show Take 2 -

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3752/a123473061508nu9.jpg

Unfortunately when he did his snow angels on the line .. there were about 3000 heads and waving arms, the flag mans stand and a fence post in my way and I missed the shot. Personally... I think they were smoke angels =)

Day 2 - NEXTEL CUP race

Our seats placed us directly across from Matt Kenseths pit stall. Now this is a driver whom I have a lot of bad feelings towards... great driver. but for some readon he just makes me angry.. so it was fun to take the before and after pics of his car

Before -
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/1687/a133488ux6.jpg

After -
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/6991/a133492bq3.jpg

Tony Takes the Lead - 5 Laps to go and Tony Stewart passes Kevin Harvik to take the lead... which lasted until the end of teh straitaway as he realized he did not have the car to hold the lead.
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6589/a133497jv9.jpg

Checkered Flag -

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/9613/a133498jm9.jpg

Kevin's Smoke Show -

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/6660/a133502ux4.jpg

So that's pretty much it for the good ones.

I shot at ISO 400 and at 1/640 for pretty much the whole race both days. Couldn't have paid for better weather 72 and sunny the entire time. I learned a lot about panning the shot and how to use the shutter speed to my advantage to get the shot I wanted. I started out shooting at 1/2000 but I couldn't get the blur I was looking for to show the speeds. So all in all it was a good workshop for me to learn and enjoy a race weekend with the family. Can't wait to do it again =)

Jay

It looks like you had fun. You still have that ole fence in the way though. I also notice that it appears you need to go one step over center to get a proper exposure. Normally the AP requires all photos to be shot at 800 shutter and ISO between 800 and 1000 and use the aperature to control the exposure. This will give you a good wheel blur and background blur yet keep the important details sharp. Not bad for your first big race though. It's a lot tougher panning when your sitting right along side the track, especialy sitting at the exit of a turn where cars are coming past you at 220mph and you have 5 seconds to get the shot framed and taken.....a lot different than sitting in the stands

JS

Nice job. It's tough to get every thing you want when you got the family in tow. I have four kids and have seen many images fade away without getting them because I was attending to one of the kids needs at the time. I really love that first shot. It's one to treasure for the ages. He'll love it one of these days as well.

Thanx for the advice JS. I am still working on "learning the camera" but your advice did give me better shots than had I gone at it alone and started playing with the settings. Next race there will be no kids with me so I can venture out and find better locations to shoot from to avoid the fence.

This also emphasized for me the hinderances of my camera. The slow write time to the card cost me a few shots (such as the checkered flag shot could have been tighter to the line... but since it wasn't on burst mode I had to wait for it to write... and Kevin was around turn one by then lol. I know more of what to look for now than I did before I went. There's a few dozen shots that weren't even worth processing which were either under exposed or way over exposed as the sun came out form behind the clouds behind me asI shot. The learning curve is steep but it's a lot of fun on the way up.

OT - I love that shot too. He's got the drive and ambition already to get his but in a car. When we were crossing the border the #07 Jack Daniels car was sitting outside teh Duty Free and we were allowed to climb in and have a seat. We planted him in the car and man did his face light up. I wish I would have had a working memory card or at the very least a back up camera to capture that smile. Best one all weekend. But theres no use crying over a missed shot.. just a lesson learned to prepare for the worst next time.

Jay

Jay, I once went to qualifying for the Indy 500 and left my cards at home. For the morning practice I had to borrow a card from the AP office, then at the break I flew home and grabbed my cards....62 miles round trip through Indianapolis in 1 hour and 15 minutes and back in my seat. It takes 30 minutes normally to get to the track from home. It helps when you know how to get through and around traffic and into the track without hassels.

JS

Normally the AP requires all photos to be shot at 800 shutter and ISO between 800 and 1000 and use the aperature to control the exposure. This will give you a good wheel blur and background blur yet keep the important details sharp.
Surely that depends on where you shoot the cars, what speed they're doing?
It sounds right for NASCAR, that's continuous high speed racing.
But other races/forumulas I'm not sure that'll work.

Certainly my experience at Silverstone for even F1 racing is that 1/800 is too fast in the slower corners to show wheel blur. It might show a little tyre logo blur, but the wheels still appear sharp.
Come down to Formula3, Formula 3000, Formula Renault, or to the GT cars and the speeds are different. Even more so for the historics, or events like the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb.

Definitely a point to watch is your exposure. I have to confess :blush2:
In widely varying lighting conditions, while dodging the raindrops, I took my eye off the bottom line in the viewfinder :(
Found that while I'd dialled in 1000 ISO I'd forgotten to set it lower as the clouds lifted and ended up with shutter speeds in the 1/1200 range, working in Av mode not Tv and forgetting to adjust for the condutions :mad2:
If I'd stayed in Tv mode at 1/640 then the aperture would have been too small on my 100-400 and quality suffered. It seems best at f11 +/- one stop.

Av & Tv mode? Sorry SW, I never shoot those modes, I always shoot manual, day or night. I never have shot those modes, and always have shot using manual mode as I want complete control of the exposure. Yeah it takes constant keeping track of the settings in the viewfinder but once you do it a couple of times it isn't too tough. The trick is remembering to use the the aperature and not change shutter speed. I rarely have to change ISO.

Most Canon "L" lenses are best between f9 & f11, however if you find you shoot at specific f stops more you can have Canon adjust your camera body and lens(es) to be sharper at the f stop you want. It's not expensive and is a good thing to have done when having other work done.

JS

Normally the AP requires all photos to be shot at 800 shutter and ISO between 800 and 1000 and use the aperature to control the exposure. JS

JS - I don't plan on ever shooting for AP, but I'm curious - why do they require the ISO to be between 800 & 1000? What do they care about the ISO. I am surely showing my ignorance here.

The higher ISO allows more wheel blur, better sense of motion, and better exposure, not too mention allowing for a sharper image at the normal "sweet spot" of f9 as most lenses are sharpest at f9.

JS