ANY TORONTONIANS?????

Bah... that Honda Indy has corrupted me and I'm now considering switching off VW's and going back to Honda with this

Nice clean lines to photograph heh. Hybrid too so the hippies can stay off my case about my earth destroying, fume spewing turbocharged GTI's.

smcclelland wrote in post #10561187
I usually throw the camera into TV mode and go between 1/80 to 1/120 for pans (may need to adjust based on speed of car and closeness). If it's a front on shot I'll crank it up even higher as I know I don't have to worry about wheel blur so I go 1/500 - 1/3000 to get the background blur I need.

Not sure if you use this trick but on all my sports bodies I move the AF tracking to the AF-ON button on the back so I can constantly track with one button and then use the shutter for grabbing exposure when I need it. Works great when you have cars traveling into shadows and back into light so you can meter without losing AF.

I'd also suggest setting the 7D to ignore foreground objects (can't remember the CFn off the top of my head but I'll look it up). This is a nice feature from the 1D series that tells the camera when it has a lock to stay locked and don't jump to say a fence or pole in the foreground.

Hope that helps

Yup it does. Actually I already do that but use Av mode more. I should try Tv more often Hopefully the OOF pix I'm getting aren't the equipment but user error I guess I need to practice more.

Ah, the Honda CR-Z. It was on display behind the grandstand on the pit side of the track. Looked pretty nice.

AV mode can be tough because the camera will constantly fluctuate the shutter speed to meet the required aperture. With the 7D I found it super handy to set C1, C2, C3 to my preferred shooting styles and just switch custom function dials if I wanted to go from a really slow shutter pan to a faster 3/4 shot. What were most of your OOF images shot at shutter speed wise? Did it grab focus on the fence by chance?

Yeah I looked at it inside the display area inside and behind the main grand stand. Looks pretty nice and from the UK/Japan views it's definitely getting good reviews. It's been 10 years since I've tuned a Honda though haha and the vortex guys would run me out of town

Hmm, never thought of using the C1-C3 settings on the dial. What were your settings for those?

The shutter speeds varied from 1/400 @ 3.5 to 1/3200 @ 2.8. Throughout the day I was fiddling around with the f-stop and eventually stuck with 5.6 with a fairy low ss.

The shots that were OOF were all when the cars came out of turn 11 (I was at the start/finish line). I would grab them as they were as far to the left as possible.

Btw, when using either to 70-200 or 100-400, when you pan hand held do you set the IS to 1 or 2?

C1 was slow pans so 1/80 - 120 Tv mode
C2 was 3/4 shots 1/320 Tv mode
C3 was head on shots so 1/500-1/1000 or higher depending on light.

If you want to drop the pictures into DPP and turn on the AF point and post them we can take a look and see what might have caused the camera to go OOF.

Here's a 3/4 sample with the 40D + 100-400 (you now own heh). 1/320 in Tv gave me f/11 at ISO400.

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Damn, those are nice and sharp. What ISO do you normally shoot at?

Yes I was in servo mode and actually using expansion with the center point.

I did find that I got better results when I was tracking the cars coming out of pit lane and when they cleared the fence and wall I rang off the shots.

Ok, I shoot in raw so how would I go about saving the image with the AF showing (I don't use DPP )?

how far were you standing from the track ?

picard wrote in post #10567597
how far were you standing from the track ?

Basically just off to the side of the start/finish but on the very top level of the grandstand on the Direct Energy building side of the track.

tcc wrote in post #10567521
Damn, those are nice and sharp. What ISO do you normally shoot at?

Yes I was in servo mode and actually using expansion with the center point.

I did find that I got better results when I was tracking the cars coming out of pit lane and when they cleared the fence and wall I rang off the shots.

Ok, I shoot in raw so how would I go about saving the image with the AF showing (I don't use DPP )?

I use between 100-400 depending on the conditions to get the shutter speeds I need. On bright sunny days I can stick to ISO100-200 but on overcast days I usually have to bump it up to about ISO400 or so.

AI-Servo is finicky because AF systems are wavelength based so the more time the system has to "warm up" the better consistency you'll usually get. I've never had much success with quick draw style AF tracking to be honest.

Heh I think DPP is the only software that can read it. If you load up a RAW image into DPP (off your software disc that came with the 7D) there's an option to display AF points that will show you where on the image the camera locked focus.

Yah, I discovered how to show the AF point(s) in DPP but can't figure out how to save it as a jpeg or whatever and post it here so you can take a look.

Just use the print screen to grab a screenshot. That's the only way I am aware of at least heh.

Ah, I thought there was some trickery involved...lol

Ok, here's some pix

That's a bit puzzling to be honest because the AF system confirmed a lock and being center point you would think it would be the most accurate as well. Have you tried AF tracking of other subjects like just regular cars?

The camera/lens doesn't appear to be front focusing or back focusing as the proper DOF is there based on the AF point so I'm scratching my head as to what caused this. What is your focus distance set to? I always left the 100-400 at 1.8m-infinity because at 6.5m - infinity it's going to really limit the AF distance in tight places. I'm wondering if that may be the culprit here?

Well like the pic I posted before of Danica's car coming out of the pits, it looks to be pretty good. But no, I haven't tried tracking just regular cars. I'd feel weird standing on the sidewalk and taking pics as cars drove by..lol j/k

I usually have my focus distance on both lenses at the minimum distance (70-200 @ 1.4m and 100-400 @ 1.8m) but my friend said I should have it on 2.5 for the 200 (can't remember why). So that might have been the problem. BUT....I took this one with it at 1.4m

I'd have to see a 100% crop of that last one but it looks like that is back focusing a bit (SUN/Dr Pepper and some of the background details seem sharper than the foreground and focused subject). Do you have any micro-adjust data on the camera?

I'm hoping this isn't one of those AF hiccups people have been reporting about the 7D recently.