Motorsport, panning, hmmm....

[gmen]

As a first-time motorsport shooter, I thought I'd post a few here and await some feedback from the more experienced photogs here. I usually dabble in 'ball sports'... so this was a whole different 'ball game' for me.

Let me know your thoughts on these.

That panning thing is deadly difficult! How can I improve them? What's the best technique? All tips are welcome because I'm inspired to go back for more!

[Ouvinen]

Your pans seem to be good. Panning is a technique that takes loads of practice and if you want to have lots of blur, then you're always going to have a pretty bad succes ratio. But that's often worth the effort. Here's a few examples.. The

[gmen]

I was shooting at 1/30th of a second in the two pan shots I posted below. What shutter speeds are you folks using?

I found that a 'follow through' technique helped me - i.e. I kept following the car even after taking the pic. I seemed to get a higher hit rate that way - it was always tempting to stop panning when I hit the shutter release...

[Ouvinen]

Yeah, you should always follow through, before, during and after the exposure. 1/30 is getting slow, which means the success rate drops. It does depend on the speed of the vehicles and the optics, but with really fast cars you get blur even with 1/200, and you can always work your way down from that..

[gmen]

Thanks Ouvinen... good advice. I took the pic below at 1/80th second.

The lens was a 300mm f/2.8 with a 1.4x converter on a 10D. The picture is only slightly cropped - in a moment of madness I shot a sequence of pictures with the camera at a jaunty angle! - and this one was a keeper I thought!

[gmen]

Just posted some more shots here:
Back at the track... a mouse mat dilemma!

Your feelings, comments, feedback and general musings are welcomed!