My first time shooting motocross

[Mambeu]

I spent all day yesterday shooting my brother's races (he's #400) at our local motocross track. It was my first time doing this sort of photography, and I'd welcome any tips for next time or critiques on these images. I was shooting with a Pentax *ist DL, using an old screwmount Formula 5 85-210 zoom lens. All shooting was with the settings Iso 200, 1/750, f/16, and manual focus. I ended up taking about 180 pictures over the course of the day; these are my favorites. The only post-processing I did was bumping up the saturation in iPhoto.

[Mambeu]

Five more that I liked:

[Mambeu]

One more image; this is my favorite from the day:

[Photo-John]

My first impression is that they're all dark. I would lighten them up at least half a stop. There should be some pure white in most images and I don't think any of these have any pure white.

Aside from the exposure issue, which is totally fixable, they look pretty good. You figured out you need to shoot tight - a lot of beginners shoot way too wide. The one you like the most is framed and timed very well. I might try shooting at 1/500th of a second to get some blur on the tires. You'll lose a few if you slow down the shutter speed. But personally, I don't like it when everything in a sports photo is totally frozen. Tire movement is a good way to add a little sense of motion into a motorsports photo.

I'm curious about the lens you're shooting with. Is it all you have for a long lens? A good auto focus lens in the 70-200mm range is the standard sports photographers lens. If you really like doing this kind of stuff and you only have that old lens, then take a look at the Pentax has a relatively inexpensive 50-200mm lens as well as a new 60-250mm f/4 that looks really sweet. If you wanna keep shooting this stuff, investing in some worthy glass is a good idea.

[Mambeu]

Thanks so much for your tips; they're very helpful.

I'm curious about the lens you're shooting with. Is it all you have for a long lens?

Yes. I bought the *ist DL because it was cheap and I knew with an inexpensive adaptor I'd be able to use the screwmount lenses from my dad's old Spotmatic (I also have two 50mm lenses and one 18mm). I figured that'd let me make sure that I enjoyed this hobby before I started spending gobs of money. I am at a point now where I'm ready to buy a more serious lens (the autofocus sure seems like it'd be nice), so thanks for giving me those pointers.