Good Morning All

Details:

Lens: Canon 70-200mm- f 2.8 (200mm)

ISO 100

Speed 1/25 sec

Variable ND filter fitted

This image was taken on my first visit to a motor sport event. Taken at Oulton park. I had a great time, lots of sound & colour. Very different from my usual nature photography. Although is getting an image of a bird in flight different to capturing a car doing 130 mph, it was something I wanted to find out. At the start it was a task just getting a car in the frame, but once that was achieved I wanted to slow the shutter speed down to try & capture a sence of speed. I fitted a variable ND filter to slow down the shutter speed. I got various results, some too blurred, but i did like this image. 

I like that you can just about make out the driver & there is some sharp detail. I havent noticed much motor sport phoytography on 1x but would interested for feedback from others or from an expert in the field of motor photography. It is something I would like to do more of.

As ever all feed appreciated.

Kind regards

Stuart.

Hi Stuart and welcome to critique. A very colourful action image you have there. I don't do this type of image but have a friend that does and I've seen some amazing images over the years. He will slow pan from 1/30 sec to 1/250 sec to get the right sharpness and speed blur and wait for it may take 600 images just to get one or two. Your image I've had a look back in Photoshop and see attached changed the framing and composition. I've also tred sharpen a little more. If I had to judge this is image it needs to be far sharper in all the right places - The cars wheels are out of shape no longer round. I hape this helps...

Stuart,

Thanks for sharing the photo with us. It's nice to see this done in camera rather than with editing tools like blur filters.  We appreciate the EXIF data you provided.  1/25 second worked well for this shot.  Did you use Mode 2 for the IS setting?  

I like Daniel's crop to level the car and the panoramic frame that adds  to the sense of motion.  I had a similar idea, but with the car appearing to go downhill thinking that would make it seem like it is going even faster.  Adding space to the edges of the frame with the Content  Aware option of the Crop tool didn't work very well, so I made rectangular selections in four places and stretched them with Photoshop's 'Edit>Transform>Scale'.   That distorted the horizontal lines so they were straightened with 'Edit>Transform>Warp'.  Once the subject had more space around it was possible to crop for a 'downhill' effect. 

It's a good photo as you made it.  I just  wanted to try those editing ideas. 

You wondered if a shot like this would be much different than bird-in-flight photos.  What did you conclude?   I'm guessing bird's movements are more unpredictable, and a smaller target to focus on, so a higher 'degree-of-difficulty'.   

. . . . Steven, senior critic

Hi Stuart,

Panning shots are fun, thanks for showing your result here. I'm with Daniel, this is not (yet) it. The subject is supposed to be sharp, the rest blurred by your camera movement.

It strongly depends on the distance and angle how to achieve this. The longer the lens, the harder it gets. My shots below were shot with 240 and 280mm, a 70-200 using an 1.4x converter, 1/40th and 1/50^th of a second.

My yield was 1 out of 30 roughly, not the 600 Danny mentioned. But they’re not perfect either, just a bit more crisp. I shot them behind a 180° curve, so they were accelerating, not going 200 km/h. That made it quite predictable, because you could focus on them in the curve, and start panning when they were faster. Maybe a hint for next occasions?

I like the diagonals you kept, makes it more difficult to pan, though. Diagonals emphasize dynamics, as you can see in Danny’s edit, were the feeling of speed came down by straightening (in my view). But Steven’s edit is even better, space in front does the same for moving subjects. It would be asked too much to consider this while shooting, so leave enough space to crop from behind the subject later on, I’d recommend. Here’s what I got a couple of years ago:

Best regards,

Mike

To Daniel, Steven & Mike

Thank you all for your feedback, always appriciated. I really like Stevens composition, I do have a bit of room around the original image so I will try it. Regarding IS setting I had it on 1 but will experement a bit with this next time. As far as comparing it to birds in flight, the first few I tried of the cars, they actually were'nt in the image. Thankfully things did improve a bit. I did start with a higher shutter speed of about 1000/sec but the cars looked parked. As you rightly sayy Steven the cars are more predictable. I really like Mikes images & will take your advise.

I think my original image falls into a gap of not being sharp enough or not having enough blurr to be slightly abstract. Before going I perhaps made the mistake of looking at Drew Gibsons brilliant motorsport images that are full of colour & action.

I have attached a couple more, one with the car a little sharper & one slightly more abstract.

Thanks again.

Stuart.

Stuart,

Two very good shots of race cars!  The top one - the Pirelli/Burger King/AT&T/Shell/DMJ/Sabelt car - is technically better with the car quite sharp against the blurred background.  It's moving left to right which in many parts of the world is the way we 'read' a photograph.   It might benefit from having a bit more space ahead. 

The bottom car has a stronger sense of speed - in my opinion.  Being more blurred at the back while the front is sharper suggests the car is suddenly accelerating, You might consider lightening it up a little and maybe flipping it left-to-right to see if that works even better.  The number '95' gets reversed, but could be erased with Photoshop's 'Remove' tool.  The extra space ahead of the car can be made with the 'Content Aware' option of the Crop tool. 

A couple of white streaks across the tire and one from the mirror were erased as part of this sample re-edit.  Also de-noise for a smoother look that might contribute to the 'speed' illusion. 

. . . .  Steven