Mosport May 17th

[13inches]

I've finally got around to putting up a few pictures from Mosport taken last weekend (May 17th). The set will get bigger as I find the time to process more pictures, but please feel free to check them out and of course, all C&C are welcome.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eddie_82/sets/72157605225104032/

A few of my favourites are:

1.http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3188/2517881987_9f33e083b8_o.jpg

2. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3262/2517882047_d08f78aeff_o.jpg

3. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2273/2517882989_9a42057bb5_o.jpg

[smcclelland]

Cool shots man, I checked out the flickr page and there's some nice crisp photos in there. The BMW is a bit blurry on the front and rear, did you catch him coming into a braking turn? Mosport's got those tiny little lumps every now and then that bounce the car a little and make things a bit hard to capture. Post up more when you finish processing them.

[13inches]

Now that I've got some time, I was going to ask a few questions. This was my first time doing some higher-speed panning, and a LOT of shots came out with a touch of blur on either the front or rear of the car. The only thing I could think of was that I was bursting while I panned, and maybe the camera just isn't up to keeping focus on the whole car. Or my technique sucks.

Next time I'll try to do single shots instead of bursts.

FWIW, I was in AI Servo all day, and I think the rest of the EXIFs are intact. Ah, the joys of being a newbie.....

[jayhova]

I like the Red Bull Jetta and C4 Vette on your flickr page. I found that taking a TON of pictures with different settings was the best way for me to figure out which settings worked best from the particular locations I was at (lighting, angle, vehicles etc). I tend to use a fixed focus point in the middle so there was nothing left to be decided by the camera (I thought would be faster). If you want slightly crisper shots try speeding up the shutter speed. But then you may lose some of the motion blur. Its always a trade-off with fast moving objects. At the last race I went to I literally shot hundreds of shots a day so for me at least it took a lot of experimentation. Remember the "follow through" too when panning.

Did you shoot with RAW? Perhaps post proc to add a bit more exposure to lighten them up and boost the contrast a bit to bring out the colors.

Great shots!

[13inches]

I took close to 1000 pics that day, but have about 30-40 that I think are keepable. I was panning at different speeds, and doing some faster stop motion shots as well.

Everything was shot in JPG. I'm trying to take my PP in baby steps as I know this will be my biggest challenge. All of the shots posted have very little PP (sharpen, saturate, and maybe some shadows and highlight adjustments). Of course they've been straightened and cropped as well.

Thanks for the tips!

[smcclelland]

One thing I noticed is your aperture is rather large ranging from say f5.6-f6.3 which could be a cause for some of your front and tail blur. If you toss the camera in Tv mode and drop the shutter speed down to 1/100 or 1/80 your aperture should narrow itself thus giving you a better FOV. The issue right now is with such a large aperture your camera is trying to basically throw the objects in the background OOF which I think is what's happening with the BMW shot (3/4 shots will show this more).

At 1/160 of a second with pans your camera is enlarging the aperture to let in more light due to the faster shutter, if you step this down to 1/125 you should notice a significant change and at 1/100 and lower you'll really see that the camera's aperture is putting everything in focus. Pan shots do their own OOF using motion blur with panning so there's no need to be shooting with a large aperture really.

Also, give the levels a slight adjustment in PS or the contrast to even out the histogram and for saturation try converting the image to LAB color and then modifying the A and B channels (i use +30, -30 for the levels adjustment on both the A and B channels to saturate my images).

[Borbor]

redbull jetta shot looks like the outside of turn 3.

For a first timer, I'd be jumping up and down with your results :D

Keep it up :)

[13inches]

One thing I noticed is your aperture is rather large ranging from say f5.6-f6.3 which could be a cause for some of your front and tail blur. If you toss the camera in Tv mode and drop the shutter speed down to 1/100 or 1/80 your aperture should narrow itself thus giving you a better FOV. The issue right now is with such a large aperture your camera is trying to basically throw the objects in the background OOF which I think is what's happening with the BMW shot (3/4 shots will show this more).

At 1/160 of a second with pans your camera is enlarging the aperture to let in more light due to the faster shutter, if you step this down to 1/125 you should notice a significant change and at 1/100 and lower you'll really see that the camera's aperture is putting everything in focus. Pan shots do their own OOF using motion blur with panning so there's no need to be shooting with a large aperture really.

I actually played with the shutter speed throughout the day, ranging from 60-250 on the pans, depending on the speed the cars were going. I was always in TV mode. You'll see the white Corvette above was actually done at 1/250, since they were taken along the Andretti straight. The earlier shots taken on the front straight were during the very overcast/rainy CCTCC qualifying. I was just getting started for the day so I had the ISO at 100, hence the large aperture. Later on I went to ISO 200 or 400 for most of the shots, and the apertures were much more ideal, in the 10-20 range. You'll see the BMW above was actually taken at f/16. I will keep a closer eye on them next time though as you are right, the larger apertures did show their ugly head.

Also, give the levels a slight adjustment in PS or the contrast to even out the histogram and for saturation try converting the image to LAB color and then modifying the A and B channels (i use +30, -30 for the levels adjustment on both the A and B channels to saturate my images).

I'm using Aperture, so you've just spoken a lot of Greek to me. :(
Anyone in the know care to translate? :)

[13inches]

redbull jetta shot looks like the outside of turn 3.

For a first timer, I'd be jumping up and down with your results :D

Keep it up :)

Thanks for the encouragement!

I see you do a lot of shooting at Mosport too. I'd love to hear any tips or advice you might have about shooting there!

[13inches]

Finally got the rest of the set up. Here's a few more.

4. For some reason I got a lot of good shots of car #8
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2158/2520544673_0975d191bc_o.jpg

5. Here's a cozy little spot I found in turn 5
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3220/2521368314_e96f309cbd_o.jpg

6. One more from the same spot
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/2521367326_0916ab4805_o.jpg

7. The obligatory FWD sedan 3-wheeling
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3030/2520550525_f96cb84b20_o.jpg

8. And just because a few have mentioned it, the Jetta shot
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3195/2517881941_358c19094f_o.jpg

[13inches]

I showed these to a good friend of mine and he mentioned that I may have over-sharpened them. In doing some reading I found that the Edge Sharpen adjustment in Aperture is preferred to the Sharpen adjustment.

Anyone else care to comment on this?