Trackday event suggestions?

[armando_m]

I went to a car event, with cars running on a track, and shot a few pictures
although this is harder than I initially thought.
Every year I would go to 1 or 2 of these events, this is my first time with the DSLR,
when I had a P&S I tried and got plenty of blurry photos of the pavement while the cars were long gone.

I'll post a couple of examples

I wanted to take some good photos of the cars on the track, with blurriness of the background and
spinning tires but mostly a sharp car, here are some examples I believe I used to slow a shutter
speed and ended up with many blurry.

I used autofocus, with the focus point on the front of the cars, trying to keep the focus point on the car,
a somewhat high ISO (800) gave a fairly small aperture, about F11 to F16.
I did tried shutter speeds from 1/125 1/250 / 1/500

I obtained best results while standing farther from the track and zooming on the subject car

Lens used was the 18-200 f3.5-4.6 VR
Photos were hand held

If some can offer tips and suggestions about how to take better photos at a car event on the track I would really appreciate it

[SmartWombat]

Worth posting in the sports forum.
You got it on the last one !

[SmartWombat]

A few notes:
Black Audi: 1/500 shutter speed is a little too fast for good background blur, they're just not driving fast enough

Blue Audi 3/4 front: I'm surprised you have such a small DoF at f/11, shutter speed is about right for their speed here, though slower would be better.

Red (golf?): Now it's getting difficult. Your pan was timed perfectly for the front wheel, you can see the hub is sharp. This is where you can get great effects!
When they're close the panning speed (angular velocity if you get technical) is very high and you need to practice, practice, practice to get it right.
Pick an off-centre focus point, and nail the driver's head with it and let the front and rear of the car blur away. Or as you've done here use a focus point right on the edge and pan on one of the front wheels, with a very slow shutter speed it's great for dramatic pit stops.

Blue Audi side on: Well done! You can tell the panning speed is right because the wheel centres are sharp and the spokes are equally blurred all round the wheels.


You really ought to get some more and post on the sports forum - shameless plug