Sports Shooting

[lordlardofframs]

Hi all,

I thought I would take this opportunity to say Hi as this is my first post on the forum and to ask for some help at the same time.

My son has asked if would take some photo's at his local r/c car club this week.

I have posted this pic i found on another forum to give you some idea

http://i706.photobucket.com/albums/w...rams/r3005.jpg

I have a 350D body and the largest lense I own is a f2.8 70/200

Your suggestions for settings to get the sharpest high speed action shots would be greatly appreciated.

Darren

[canonloader]

You will need good light to get a high shutter speed. High shutter speeds are the only way to get sharp shots of moving objects without flash. You can use flash to stop action also, not because the shutter speed goes up but because the flash is so fast. Better get some practice though.

[Thalagyrt]

Indoors, outdoors? That really factors in a lot in which type of settings you should use. Considering the cars are small, you should be able to shoot just fine at f/2.8 or 3.2 and still get the whole thing in focus. I'd meter the ambient light of the track, set a manual exposure for that that gets you a shutter speed of around 1/500th of a second or higher, and go from there. That's what I do at NBA games.

[In2Photos]

Hi Darren, welcome to the Forum. I'm sure there will be plenty of helpful folks to come along and provide you with help. That being said please take a look at the Forum Rules regarding posting of images. Any images that do not belong to you should be linked and not embedded.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...ad.php?t=51022

Enjoy your time here!

[jwelch761]

Holy hell, independent disc brakes?? What scale is that? I got out of 1/10th scale nitro about 3 years ago and my RC10GT never had four disc brakes!

[lordlardofframs]

Ooops really sorry,

I hope you forgive me as I am new!! very humbled.

The shooting will be outside and flash will be permitted. Any suggested settings??

[lordlardofframs]

The r/c cars with the hydro bakes are ll 1/5th scale, 26cc petrol engines. Rapid to say the least

[Thalagyrt]

If you're outside during the day you really won't need a flash. How far away will you be? How big are the cars?

[lordlardofframs]

The cars are 1/5th scale so about 700mm long, traveling at 30/40mph distance I will be shooting is from 5m min to 30m max

[Thalagyrt]

My thoughts are to shoot at f/4 so you have some margin for error on the focus, and use whatever ISO is necessary to have your shutter speed be above 1/500th of a second and you should be golden then. Absolutely make sure you're in AI servo for this, using the center point as it's your most accurate point.

[lordlardofframs]

Thanks guys, will show you my attempts (very nervously) at the weekend

[In2Photos]

Originally Posted by Thalagyrt

My thoughts are to shoot at f/4 so you have some margin for error on the focus, and use whatever ISO is necessary to have your shutter speed be above 1/500th of a second and you should be golden then. Absolutely make sure you're in AI servo for this, using the center point as it's your most accurate point.

I'm going to disagree with James.

I would treat this as shooting motorsports instead of field sports. Use a slower shutter speed and pan to give a sense of motion. Otherwise it will look like the car is setting still. You could put it on the track with the car turned off and get the same shot.

Check out some of the threads in the motorsports shaing section adn see what others are using (probably low ISO, f/10ish, and 1/50-1/100 along with a good panning technique).

[In2Photos]

Originally Posted by In2Photos

I'm going to disagree with James.

I would treat this as shooting motorsports instead of field sports. Use a slower shutter speed and pan to give a sense of motion. Otherwise it will look like the car is setting still. You could put it on the track with the car turned off and get the same shot.

Check out some of the threads in the motorsports shaing section adn see what others are using (probably low ISO, f/10ish, and 1/50-1/100 along with a good panning technique).

So maybe I'm not right on this one!

I took a look at some of the RC shots on here and most are using a high shutter speed and still getting plenty of motion in the shots. Who knew? Oh yeah, James did!

[lordlardofframs]

I am so glad to see that even the mods can get it wrong sometimes

[Thalagyrt]

Haha, Mike, I'd imagine either method would work with the right technique! I was just speaking from my experience, which really is very different from motorsports.