Rallycross on 5/6/06 (lotsa pics)

So, this past Saturday I went to my first Rallycross event in Clayton, NC (www.thscc.com). This was actually my first time photographing at an auto event. I brought my Canon Pro1, put on a UV flter and then proceeded to shoot lots of photos (~800 after picking out the chaff), mostly in the 4MP mode to save space as I only had 1.5GB of memory. I only now got around to organizing them and looking through all of them. Anyway, here are some of the better ones shrunk down but with a 100% crop inset. I was a fun day. I experimented with faster and slower shutter speeds, but founf that often the cars weren't moving fast enough for the slower shutter speeds to make much difference, other than to make the whole image motion-blurred. Anyway, on to the shots. Comments and criticism welcome.

Image 1:

good shots. and great to see a bunch of subies out there!

whats with all the little pictures at the bottom left hand corner?

They're 100% crops to show image sharpness (or lack thereof)/size and resolution.
Reed

Would love to have seen some blur on the wheels here
What shutter were these taken at?

slow the shutter to get some blur. even 1/160 or 1/200 will help you with the feeling of motion.

As already said the shutter speeds are to fast,

Photo 1 was 1/400 at f5, photo 2 was 1/500 at f4.5, photo 3 was 1/500 at f4.5, photo 4 was at 1/500 at f4.5, photo 5 was at 1/500 at f4.5, photo 6 was at 1/250 at f6.3, photo 7 was at 1/320 at f8, photo 8 was at 1/320 at f8, photo 9 was at 1/800 at f4.5, photo 10 was at 1/800 at 4.5, photo 11 was at 1/800 at f4.5. For the most part, I could not get below about 1/320th because of the limited aperature. Also, these cars weren't moving very fast in the first place and their course was very twisty so that complicated things by making panning tricky. Anyway, off to school.
Reed

If you can't get the shutter speed with a chosen aperture low enough, you have several options:

1. lower the ISO
2. use a neutral density filter
3. or change your mind and use a different aperture.

Most of these were taken at ISO 100 or 50, so that option was essentially out. As to using a different aperature, f8 is the smallest the Pro1 will go. On the ones shot with aperatures around 4.5, I could have shot them with f8, but the results I was getting were not very satisfactory. I guess it just takes practice, though... I hadn't, however, thought about using the ND filter. What does it do?
Thanks,
Reed

A Neutral Density filter is a filter that limits the amount of light entering the camera but doesn't change it's tone.

So for your Pro1 you could have stuck one of those on the front, shot at 1/160/ISO50/f8 without massively overexposing. Probably.