First time shooting Speedway

I decided to pop along to my local speedway track last night to see what I could come up with. I knew it would be under floodlights I just wasn't prepared for how poor they were, basically just a bunch of sodium lights around the circuit. At 3200iso I was still having to underexpose a hell of a lot and certainly wasn't able to shoot above 1/250th.

Finding a good location to shoot from was also difficult due to the amount of debris coming off the track . Even right on the edge of the spectator area I still managed to get peppered with dirt and am very fortunate not to have damaged my lens. It was also pretty difficult to keep the barrier out of frame so all in all a challenging evening.

Anyway here is a small selection of what I shot all done on a 30D with Sigma 120-300mm f2.8. Post processing was using Bibble Pro.

1.
Exposure time:1/250
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 3200
Whitebalance: Auto
Exposure: shutter priority

If you shoot in raw you can do some amazing white balance corrections very quickly.

Oh, very nice shots btw!

Jurek

Nice compositons. Having been a speedway fan for years I can understand the lighting problems (will be better during the summer). Often thought about going along with my camera except the management where I would go do not allow photography outwith the track with a zoom lens of any sort. As Phil said RAW will help you to remove some of the orange cast caused by the lights. Keep up the photography and keep posting the results.

Alan

Cheers guys, I did shoot a few in RAW I just haven't got around to processing them yet so I will see how they come up although I do quite like the way these have come up anyway. I don't know if processing would remove much either as the floodlights at this particular circuit are essentially streetlights so the light they emit is actually orange.

Alan, I noticed this morning in the programme that photography is strictly forbidden but nobody said anything at the time and I was hardly inconspicious with my rucksack, monopod and 300mm lens. In fact it also states that no animals are allowed either but there was a bloke with his pet labrador standing on the main terrace so it seems they don't enforce too many of their own rules.

I actually quite like the colour tone that these have, intentional or not, it feels warm (probably wasn't in actuality!) and I like the look. Nice work.

I think the third pic kicks ass. Nicely done.

S.C.