How many shots in a day of racing?

I just finished shooting a day and half of ALMS at VIR. I missed one race and ALMS practice session Friday due to my real job despite having the day off.

I filled my CF cards by mid-morning Saturday.

No, I wasn't shooting hi-speed burst.

I did go and cull a number of shots prior to the main race and still refilled the cards.

Two 4G cards, roughly a 1000 jpegs. Now the real culling begins.
(The guy at the camera shop sold me on 4G CF originally because, "you can burm'em to DVD". I have yet to do so.

Q: Is this typical?
Am I not being selective enough?
I worked 12-14 different shooting locations from different angles to try and cover the track over the two days. I have a good idea where the best and most popular spots are.

Just want to plan for future events.

Bottom line:
- more CF cards?
- bigger CF cards?
OR
Shoot fewer shots - be more selective?

Thanks in advance.

Depends how you shoot.
If you shoot jpg and fast shutter speed and nail most of them, you don't need much more
If you shoot raw and slow shutters, you need a lot more

I'll put it this way, I shoot raw and slow shutters. My last single day event, 2 x 16gb cards, full w/ raw. That's ~1200 shots and I cull during the day. I could easy fill 4x16gb cards w/ raw in a day, and from 2400 shots have 1000 good, sharp, happy to use shots.

V4her wrote in post #14996640
I just finished shooting a day and half of ALMS at VIR. I missed one race and ALMS practice session Friday due to my real job despite having the day off.

I filled my CF cards by mid-morning Saturday.

No, I wasn't shooting hi-speed burst.

I did go and cull a number of shots prior to the main race and still refilled the cards.

Two 4G cards, roughly a 1000 jpegs. Now the real culling begins.
(The guy at the camera shop sold me on 4G CF originally because, "you can burm'em to DVD". I have yet to do so.

Q: Is this typical?
Am I not being selective enough?
I worked 12-14 different shooting locations from different angles to try and cover the track over the two days. I have a good idea where the best and most popular spots are.

Just want to plan for future events.

Bottom line:
- more CF cards?
- bigger CF cards?
OR
Shoot fewer shots - be more selective?

Thanks in advance.

There are no Camera Police who enforce the number of frames you expose at an event. Take as many pictures you need and then take more.

You can never tell at an event when a a seemingly meaningless image will be important in the future.

Also, note that a 4GB memory card is considered small, and it's common for sports photographers to carry several 16GB or 32 GB cards.

I shot over 1100 photos in one day at the last ALMS race in Baltimore. Memory cards are (relatively) cheap so shoot away.

Sounds about right to me.

Last event I did was a school I shot one or two of each car on each pass times the 5 corners I shot from during the day. Does not take too many cars to make a thousand shots.

lol You don't take many photos! I went (for 2 hours) to an air show this weekend and shot 700 photos! Mind you I just got my 7d and FULLY used the fps speed for panning shots. I am going to an event this weekend and plan on shooting more than that...

4k on one day last weekend. Didn't even do that much track stuff!

I generally take 30-40gb of cards to the track.
At the track I typically shoot 1000-1500 pics in a day.

Shooting rallying the number drops dramatically - maybe 250 pics a stage, 3 stages a day.

Often, the question is posed on this forum about the number of frames exposed at an event. That kind of question assumes the photographer has some sort of superhuman control over an event and only a small number of frames are needed. However, in motorsports or any other event, the unexpected is typical, and it takes many frames to ensure you have the best image. There's no way to know in advance when a great moment will arrive, and sometimes you don't know when you've had a meaningful moment until after the fact - and then you wish you'd exposed one more frame.

Nhat Meyer of the San Jose Mercury News wrote an instructional account of his experience at the women's gold medal football match at the Olympic Games that helps illustrate this point.

In summary, a photographer doesn't control an event, the event controls the photographer.

To echo what others have said you need more memory and more shots don't hurt anything really. You need to take however many it will take to get the shots you need.

usually my track stuff has to do with HPDE days so 3-4 groups with 3-5 sessions a day. Gives them about 10-15 laps per session. I can blow off 1000 images a group a session if I really wanted to go at it. But generally, I do about 200 a group a session with a few extra if there is a tight battle, someone asks for more or there is an on track incident. Also, some locations on the track dont really call for many shots because nearly every time they come around they will be in the same line doing the same thing.

Much of what I end up doing is lots of rapid fire to catch if anything does go wrong. Then delete most of the series accept for the 1 or so good ones. I usually kill about 80% of what I shoot at an HPDE event because they are mostly dupes throughout the day.

Since I got the 7D I've been doing around 2500-3500 in a day for big races. That is a full day at the track from 8-5 shooting every race group. Events like the Monterey Motorsports Reunion have all 18, I think, race groups run on Friday and then half run again Saturday and half Sunday. That is around 200 shots per group, maybe 6-7 per car on Friday. Not really that many when you think about it.

I have 5 16GB CF cards, well 4 now one died at Spa this year which sucked. The only reason to not shoot a lot is that you have to go through them all when your done. I shoot RAW, a 16GB CF card will hold about 700 RAW shots.

I'd say more and bigger cards. Don't shoot less.

nobody cares how many pictures you take during a day, except you when you have to go through them the next day. memory is cheap, buy more.

I shoot between 2 and 5k per day at an airshow, do not delete at the show. 60-100k per year.

Try panning and dragging the shutter. Guaranteed you're going to want to burst as many as possible looking for one solid sharp one, same thing with airplanes - I would like to have options, it's way better to have 10 pictures with one sharp plane than one picture that isn't sharp.