Camera settings

[Waitey]

What shutter speed do you uses for trackday work?

 

[TheCake]

Usually around 1/250 or similar if panning - depends really.

 

[Waitey]

Can you post a few demo shots?

 

[Rich]

1/320 at an ISO to get around f8 of less (depends how sharp your less is) for head on and 3/4 shots.

1/200 ideally 1/160 or less for side on pans, depends on the length of the lens and how steady your hand holding is.

I struggle to go less than 1/100 Si can do 1/80 pans.

 

[ukaskew]

1/250 is pretty much the standard, good balance between actually getting some shots and showing movement. You can go much slower but it gets very difficult, but then the results are arguably better when it does work. I use 1/50th quite often but only get 10 good shots from 100 with that, however at 1/250th it's more like 75 out of 100 good shots.

Here are a few samples all taken from the same place, look at the advertising boards in the background for an idea of how much background blur each setting achieves.


1/50

1/80

1/100

1/125

1/250

1/1000

1/1600

 

[Waitey]

Thank you guys. I've just bought a nikon 70-300 lens and i'm going to sit on the dual carriage way practicing.

 

[Rich]

Great demo of the shutter speeds there Chris, anything above 1/400 will not show any motion.

I need to practice more and get down to some slower shutter speeds for pans. That said I dont really like pans that much for cars.

 

[TheCake]

The faster the shutter speed the better the hit ratio of sharp->blurred roughly.

Here's a 1/250

(Resized for web use)

And a 1/80...

I'd stick with something like 1/250 to be sure of not wasting your day.

 

[Waitey]

Were you panning for both those shots?

 

[TheCake]

Very much so. If you don't pan it doesn't work.

 

[Waitey]

Thats what i have touble with at the moment. Matching my panning to the car speed.

 

[TheCake]

Ok try this...

1. Take your time.
2. Don't stand too close to the fence/side of the track.
3. Try and keep the car equi-distance from you as you pan
4. Pan whilst following a particular part of car, a wing mirror, an advert etc.

And just keep practicing. If you zoom out then its easier to get the car in. The more you practice the less chopped off noses and boots you'll get until you get the whole car full frame, like the DTM pic I posted.

 

[TheCake]

Remember you can always crop track out, you can't draw bits of the car/scenary afterwards.

 

[Rich]

What Si said plus, give the Auto Focus a second of so tracking the car so you pick it properly with the shutter half pressed at least befor you shoot.

Use the centre AF or one of the points only for more accurate tracking and quicker AF pick up.

Most important one I have found, follow through with the camera after the car goes by. Helps loads. Rather than just clicking and then stopping.

 

[ukaskew]

^^ Indeed, it's like a golf swing (I think, never actually played apart from PGA European Tour on my Mega Drive!), plenty of motion both before and after the point where you shoot is needed to get a good shot. And vertical movement is bad and automatically creates blur regardless of how smooth a pan is.

Probably not worth trying at this stage but manually focusing is more likely to get you a pin sharp image once you nail the panning technique. I always fire off a few shots at 1/1000 to find where the ideal focus point is, once they are sharp I move down to 1/100 or whatever. As long as the cars pass in roughly the same place it's fairly easy work from then on. Saying that though my auto-focus probably isn't up to the standard of the D-SLR boys here so it may be easier to just stick with AF on the better equipment.

 

[al]

About 30 seconds lol