D1GP Drift vs Grip, Irwindale Speedway, CA - more drifting action

My first time attending a D1 Grand Prix event. Fun times, lots of nice drift cars. Lighting and camera settings were tricky as it was my first time shooting a night event like this. I was using my 17-55 and 430EX flash (lumiquest soft box for close up pics). I really really need a 70-200 f2.8 IS. A lens like that just begs to be used at an event like this. I guess that is my next major purchase.

Here are some pics from this past Thursday (C & C welcome):

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Ooh, the one of what I think is a 180SX (fourth from bottom, mid-drift), both pics of the girls and whatever the heck that second from bottom thing is (mustang? god it looks hardcore, that is one nice looking car) look great

The last shot has some nice ambience, too... gives you a good feel for what it's like there.

Jim G wrote:
Ooh, the one of what I think is a 180SX (fourth from bottom, mid-drift), both pics of the girls and whatever the heck that second from bottom thing is (mustang? god it looks hardcore, that is one nice looking car) look great

The last shot has some nice ambience, too... gives you a good feel for what it's like there.

close, it's a JDM Silvia S15 (aka 240SX in North America).

The infield pics were lit by those huge bright lights ontop of the grandstands. I used a little flash fill to help too. The girl pics were pretty much untouched in Photoshop, slight curve adjustment and that's it.

Yeah, that monster of a car is a Mustang!

Great pics, I think the Silvia & Mustang pics came out the best... and you can't take pics at a car event without getting some shots of import models.

those r pretty damn good man! love it!

Amazing Panning shot here:

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thanks for the comments.

for those with more experience at night action photography, what kind of settings are you using? i really wanted to avoid using ISO 1600, but couldn't in most shots. i was pretty much on f/2.8 the whole time and trying to really catch my shots, but alot of them were throwaways. any tips that you can share?

great photos i would love to get some pics like that! all of them look not much noise for iso 1600 did you use a noise reducer?

on some of the pictures with the girls, i think i bumped it down to ISO 400 because of the bright grand stand lights. But for the car pics, I didn't use a noise reducer.

Damn, I missed this! When was this event?

Yeah, it was last week, Thursday! I guess try and catch the next one sometime in December.

Great series here.. I love all of these and especially the one in mid drift... thanks for sharing