First time shooting motorsports -- Stunt Show.

So I've been looking for exciting things to shoot ever since I got my 70-200 f4 L (non IS) and a local motorcycle shop has a "Two Wheel Tuesday" get together and I stopped by and took some shots.

The exif should be intact, but if not, they were taken at ISO 800, and ran through lightroom to adjust the color balance a little bit, and then through photoshop using Noise Ninja to reduce the noise.

Let me know what you think, or areas I can improve on! Thanks!


1.

9.

vary sick

Thanks!

One comment I got from another forum was that maybe more DOF was needed. I guess that might be true, 100% some of the pictures look a little soft, or OOF in parts, and I just kind of figured that was because of camera shake, but it's defiantly something I'm going to take into consideration and test out.

Is there a good way that I can figure out what the DOF of my lens is at different apertures and focal lengths?

Might want to have them do something other than just hold the bike up, get some motion blur in there. In all but 3 you can see his foot on the ground, all he is doing is holding the bike up. But if thats what you were going for then move around and get some different views with eye contact. Looking at someone just sitting there and seeing the back of his lid isn't very pleasing...

I can't see the exif but what was your ss?

Hi. The lighting is pretty harsh, so that pale areas are a featureless white (e.g. shoes, back of arm/neck) and dark areas are featureless black (e.g. front of jacket). Getting a shot in the shade, on a more overcast day, or closer to sunrise/sunset would help with this. ISO800 is a very high value to use on all but the best cameras... I wouldn't use it on my 5D unless I had to. There's no EXIF in your pictures, so it's hard to know if you were pressed that far, but as I'd guess you've used a needlessly small aperture as your DOF actually looks quite large to me, and such harsh lighting suggests a bright time of day, I'd say your shutter speed was probably needlessly fast at the cost of these other factors. Keep in mind that you probably _want_ the stuff more than a metre or two infront of or behind the bike to be well out of focus so it's no distracting. #2 and #6 are heading in this direction, while #11 shows the cost of _not_ having shallow DOF. Some sense of action would also definitely help. Cheers, Tony

Nice shots! I would watch the framing a little more. You're fairly left shifted and the bike becomes much more of the subject than the rider. However, I like the composition/framing of 7, 10, and 11 a lot. I agree with the lighting and DOF comments but pretty neat shots!

Thanks for the comments and ideas!

I thought my exif would be intact, but here it is for select shots:

#2 is ISO 800, 200mm, f4, 1/1250
#6 is ISO 800, 123mm, f4, 1/2000
#11 is ISO 800, 70mm, f4, 1/2000

So yeah, I'm thinking that I should have bumped down the ISO and delt with a slower shutter speed? What about the aperture? I actually had it as large as I could @ 4. I was shooting on an overcast day at sundown, so the light was pretty weird.

Also, these pictures weren't really posed, he was moving in all of them, just had his foot down I guess because he said it was easier to catch idle. Of course I missed the shots of him doing a one hander, but I have a few standing wheelies of his that I think turned out alright.

I realize I clipped his tire a couple times, but he just came too damn close to me... lol I thought the eye contact and facial expression would sort of overrule the too close of a crop thing.

Any more input?

As you can see, #2 with f4 at 200mm has a lot more background blur than #11 with f4 at 70mm. So, try not to get too close. As a general rule, if you don't have some Image/Optical Stablisation / Vibration Reduction/Dampening whatever-marketing-term-your-company uses, you want a shutter speed of 1 divided by your focal length. So at 200mm, 1/200th of a second shutter speed should have been ok. 1/1250 was indeed more than you needed - four times slower would still have been fast enough, suggesting ISO 200 would be appropriate. If you had any IS, you could use ISO 100 unless your subject was moving significantly.

As for clipping tires and eye contact/facial expression... rather than trying to get everything in one shot - great though that may be if you pull it off - try a few close ups as well.

Cheers, Tony