panning safety car

[agaduc996]

A little panning practice. What could I have done better iso100, f9.9 , 1/100? Maybe a little faster shutter?

[Photo-John]

You'll have to be pretty smooth at 1/100th of a second but it should be possible. You'll just have more throwaways. I think 1/125th is about as slow as I go with motorsports and that's risky. It looks like you may have a focus issue here, too. Tell us about your focus technique and the gear you used for this photo.

[SmartWombat]

You'll find the number of keepers goes down dramatically with longer shutter time.
And if the car is going away from you so that its distance changes, it could well go out of focus during the exposure.
Plus the effect of bumps and body roll will be increased in a longer exposure, all adding up to far more in the bin.

I'm glad I'm shooting digital not film!
I can get one keeper at 1/25 second and look like brilliant ... if I don't share any others.

So you need the distance from you to be as constant as possible, that means being beside the track and shooting at 90 degrees to it, or at the centre of radius of a turn.

Remember that what you keep stationary in your viewfinder is sharpest, so if you're catching a car and you can pan on the driver you can get some cool blur effects as the car in front of and behind the driver moves out of the plane of focus.
Or on a night stop into the pits, pan on the front wheel as the brakes glow red and let the rest of the car defocus and blur around it.

Lots of creative possibilities.

[wfooshee]

The focus aspect become even worse if you half-press and pan, then shoot, if your AF is set to lock on the half-press. Same thing with bursts: locked focus goes out as the subject moves.

OTOH, setting continuous focus drops your frame rate as the camera makes sure of focus with every shutter trip.

I'm not sure you shouldn't bring your ISO up a couple stops. You could use a smaller aperture then, and get better depth of field. With panning, your background blur comes from motion, not from bokeh.

Some may disagree, but when I'm panning, I spot meter. Matrix metering is looking at stuff that has nothing to do with the car, and centerweighted does, too, just not so much.

You may even want to forget auto-focus completely. That's what I did on my night shots at Sebring in this thread. I used Live View to focus on the track, just about at the center of the pavement, and shot pretty much within 15 or 20 feet left or right of that point. Once in a while I'd check a picture by zooming it, adjust if needed, and eventually zero in the focus. Kind of like lobbing artillery: short, short, long, short, ON!

[agaduc996]

All, Thank you for the advice. For this shot I was using my canon xs with a Sigma 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM. The shot was taken at iso100, f9.9 , 1/100. I was a little slow on picking up the drivers side window and looks as though my focus point was on the Oakley sticker on the rear quarter window. As for focus technique: The spot I took this photo is just exiting the pits into turn one of the track. This was the night before the race and the safety driver was doing practice laps. When he came through on the previous lap he was going maybe 70-80 km. I was AIservo and locked focus on his first pass. I held that focus for his second pass (current shot) which was around 200km. I think a part of the focus problem PJ may be seeing is my late pick up. My initial focus was just prior to the turn apex and this shot was just exiting the turn. Probably a good 5-7 meters outside of my original focus point (oops my bad).

I just received my new D7 this week and am going to try to get some practice with the new controls before the GP in two weeks. Hope to get some good shots over the three days.

[wfooshee]

Ooh, Indy MotoGP. Yes, bring us bikes!!!!

Speaking of which, what are those in your avatar? It's so small.....

For focus, if they're passing pretty much perpendicular to the line of your shot, then let it autofocus. If they aren't, then figure out your focus tracking. The only reason I turned off autofocus and went through what I went through at Sebring was because in the night it was not possible to autofocus.

[SmartWombat]

My initial focus was just prior to the turn apex and this shot was just exiting the turn. Probably a good 5-7 meters outside of my original focus point (oops my bad).

That's a problem with pre-focussing.
If something happens outside the zone you focussed on, you can miss the shot.
If you're focussed on the apex of the turn, then someone understeering off into the kitty litter may be out of focus.

I keep AF separate from shutter release with custom function settings on my 1D, so that AF is on the * button on the rear. That means I can prefocus if I want to, and then AF if needed.

[agaduc996]

That's a problem with pre-focussing.
If something happens outside the zone you focussed on, you can miss the shot.
If you're focussed on the apex of the turn, then someone understeering off into the kitty litter may be out of focus.

Yes, I thought I was going to be smart and get my setup figured out so I could get that great shot. Problem is I keep forgetting I'm not that smart . I got caught up talking to the guy next to me the all of a sudden oops here come the car..... crap there goes the car.

Also thanks for the great tip on setting the * to AF. That makes tons of sense. I think I will try and play with that setting a bit this week to get used to the feel before hitting the track. after all I only have 28 laps to catch these blokes. Still getting used to the new controls of the 7d. I can see how things will be easier once I stop being all thumbs. Just taking some getting used to things not being where I thought they were.

[agaduc996]

wfooshee, Those are two of my Ducatis, monster 900 and an ST2 at the top of Loveland Pass CO looking down into Arapahoe Basin. That was the week of my wedding and the wife and I snuck out for a ride before rehearsal dinner. Also have a track set up 996 and a 1100s Multistrada. I need to find a better avatar as there is to much going on in this one to make it worth anything at this size.