Rallycross

[brmill26]

Hey guys, had the opportunity to shoot some Rallycross this weekend. There weren't a lot of cars, but the weather was great. Turns out the dirt was too; some rain the day before left the dirt wet enough for some great looking roost without being dusty.

Apparently the Stig was on hand thrashing an old Audi (that's only funny if you've seen Top Gear)


Sun's on the wrong side, yes, but there wasn't a turn like this going the other way. I love this shot.










Steele dragway in the background

[Photo-John]

No comments? What the heck??!!

These are cool. I don't know if I've seen any rally photos here yet. So it's good to see these. I'd love a chance to shoot some rally racing. And I'd love to get my Suby out on the dirt and pin it! Well, actually I have. But it wasn't as safe as this appears to be

A couple comments, if you'll permit...

I would use a larger aperture for less depth-of-field on the tighter shots. Maybe you already know this. But it will drop out the background and make the car stand out from the background better. Depth-of-field is good on the long shot. But the composition isn't working. The car is too far outside the main composition. There also appears to be some variation in color in these images. I don't know if it's varying auto white balance or your adjustment. But some of them look too red to me.

Thanks for posting these! I hope you get to shoot more. I sure would like to see more!

[brmill26]

Thank you very much John. This was my first time to shoot or even see Rally in person. It's not very common in America. I've been around and shot a lot of motocross though, so I figured it wouldn't be too much different... just two more wheels and no jumps. It was a lot more fun to watch than I expected. Yes, SCCA does a good job of keeping things safe. Maybe even a bit too much... they saw me walking around shooting, called me over and said I needed a "spotter" to "watch my back." Luckily one of my friends had gone with me and was willing, but I've shot a fair number of race events over the years and never been told I needed a nanny. Seems a little silly when there's only 1 car on the course at a time and that's what I'm shooting. But anyway...

Thanks for tips! I definitely need all the advice I can get, and that's exactly the sort of thing I need to hear. I shot all of these on f/9 and ISO100 for two reasons.
1) I seem to have the most luck getting sharp(er) results at smaller apertures b/c the focus doesn't have to be quite dead-on to look good, which helps me with fast-moving objects and slow-moving continuous focus. Or at least that seems to be my experience so far. I know I could pick a single spot to focus on, but then you run the risk of something happening outside that one point, like a big roost-throwing slide here, or in autocross, a spin out or big powerslide. I know my lens is the weak point on that count, but at the moment it's all I've got to work with. Shooting a smaller aperture is the best work-around I've found so far to help compensate for the focus. It's not that I couldn't do a larger one, it would just increase the number of throw-aways. As is, about 40% of this shoot got cut for missed focus.

2) It was a very bright day, as you can see, and thus I was using f/9 to slow the shutter enough to get some wheel blur. Even at that the Subaru was the only one fast enough to get much blur. But I'll be shooting at an autocross this Sunday and the speeds will be higher, so using a smaller aperture won't be as much of an issue for the motion blur.


On the color, I noticed that too and I really don't know why. I have noticed in some of my results and many of those posted by other XTi users in critique tend to be a little red. The second shot (subaru) I processed separately, but all the rest were batch-processed from RAW. I guess the difference may be due to the auto WB changing from shot to shot? On a day like this where the light was constant (no clouds), would it be best to set a K temperature baseline in Digital Photo Professional and batch process to that?

Thanks again for the help, the advice yall have given me has really helped me improve!

[Jimmy B]

Brad are you using ALL of the focus points?
Say you set up with the car coming left to right. Have one of the top or bottom left focus points active. Standing with your feet just a little wider than shoulder width follow the car (pan) by twisting at you hips. Remember when the car get directly in front of you it will want too jump past the lens. Please don't get discouraged it takes practice, just be as smooth as you can and gently push the shutter button. MOST IMPORTANT follow through as you take your shot. I hope this helps a little next time you go out and shoot.
Jimmy B

[brmill26]

Jimmy - No, I used the center point for most stuff, but I did use a few other points to change the shots up a little bit. If I use ALL points the camera choses, and with the 50mm I'm usually not able to get close enough and it gets confused whether to focus on the car, foreground, background, etc.

Thanks for the tips! I think I'm getting the panning down pretty well... it's more a matter of this lens' focus being able to keep up, which a lot of times it can't. But I know that, so I just have to work around it until I can afford a 70-200 L.

[SmartWombat]

Looks like you could do with a slightly longer lens.
If these were shot with 50mm then you're closer to the outside of a bend with that Audi than I'd like to be !

Your panning looks good.
Particularly on the Subaru shots - that 4WD throws up the mud nicely !

I'm looking forward to you getting the 70-200 L - and filling the frame.
It's so good I bought two of them ... because I dropped and broke one and couldn't be without it. Now it's repaired I have two, one for each camera bag

[brmill26]

Haha, you'd better believe the 70-200 is #1 on the list for summer job money, that's for sure. Every one of those, except the last, is a crop to some degree. That's where those 10Mp come in quite handy.

Thanks for the compliments Paul - that Subi was a lot of fun to shoot!