Can someone tell me what happened?

[Hartness53]

Please excuse that this was taken with my Kodak P&S. The exif is 1/2 sec. shutter speed, aperture 3.8,ISO 125. If anyone can fix it i would love to see it I believe without the blur it would be an excellent shot.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i207/Hartness53/Image033.jpg

[Box Brownie]

Hi

I know little of drag racing but can I just check something with you?

The blur you are refering to is that at the righthand side and at about the point that you took the picture was there a second car that pulled away out of shot? If so the reason for the blur is the 'ghost' effect of the second car being partially exposed in the shot and then 'disappearing' for the balance of the time the shutter was open.

I know that is not what you asked but just wanted a little clarification.

As for removing said 'blur' & light trails well my PS skills are not up to such cloning and masking, so hopefully someone with enough of those skills will chime in and advise.

For the record one day I would liekt o get to a dragtrack.

:)

[John Thawley]

FIrst, I'm guessing you were on a tri-pod?

One of the things at work here is the slow shutter (allows for blur) and your flash fired... that is freezing the car and tires.

So... I "think" what happened is you shot, the flash fired... froze everything... BUT, after that, while the shutter was still open, the left (driver's) front fender and wheel lifted. So it is soft... everything else was suspended. Additionally, it does appear that something else moved out of the frame probably just prior to the flash.. but still while that shutter was wide open. Maybe the red eye setting was on?

There's nothing to fix... Photoshop won't help this. And, honestly, the flash killed the shot. With the tires frozen like that, all of the energy is gone out of the shot.

JT

[michvin]

FIrst, I'm guessing you were on a tri-pod?

One of the things at work here is the slow shutter (allows for blur) and your flash fired... that is freezing the car and tires.

So... I "think" what happened is you shot, the flash fired... froze everything... BUT, after that, while the shutter was still open, the left (driver's) front fender and wheel lifted. So it is soft... everything else was suspended. Additionally, it does appear that something else moved out of the frame probably just prior to the flash.. but still while that shutter was wide open. Maybe the red eye setting was on?

There's nothing to fix... Photoshop won't help this. And, honestly, the flash killed the shot. With the tires frozen like that, all of the energy is gone out of the shot.

JTAt least in Canon P&S cameras the "night shooting" mode works exactly as you described. Flash exposure followed by long shutter to catch dark background

[Jim M]

I don't think Beswick's car moved during the exposure. Besides not seeing any evidence of it in the photo, the backup man is still giving him hand signals and is in front of the car rather than behind it. I'm more inclined to think that Arnie was staged or prestaged and something or someone moved into or out of the frame during the exposure. Whatever it was, it was in the right hand lane since you can see streaks all the way down to just above the guardrail. Most of the light appears to be coming from the track lights rather than on camera flash, so I don't think the camera moved during the exposure. This is substantiated by the fact that people in the background show subject motion, but the fence and every other stationary object bright enough to register on the image is tack sharp. The puzzling thing is the banding seen in the smear. The light source must have been pulsating or the object vibrating. So, my take in the whole deal is that they were still staging and a car in the other lane backed into the picture before the exposure ended. The pulsation in the blur could possibly be from someone else's red-eye reduction preflash.

[John Thawley]

I don't think Beswick's car moved during the exposure. Besides not seeing any evidence of it in the photo, the backup man is still giving him hand signals and is in front of the car rather than behind it. I'm more inclined to think that Arnie was staged or prestaged and something or someone moved into or out of the frame during the exposure. Whatever it was, it was in the right hand lane since you can see streaks all the way down to just above the guardrail. Most of the light appears to be coming from the track lights rather than on camera flash, so I don't think the camera moved during the exposure. This is substantiated by the fact that people in the background show subject motion, but the fence and every other stationary object bright enough to register on the image is tack sharp. The puzzling thing is the banding seen in the smear. The light source must have been pulsating or the object vibrating. So, my take in the whole deal is that they were still staging and a car in the other lane backed into the picture before the exposure ended. The pulsation in the blur could possibly be from someone else's red-eye reduction preflash.

Great observation. The banding is strange. EXIF shows red eye was operational.

JT