Cars at Croft - First attempt

Hi, never posted before and quite new to my camera, a Canon 450d.
Read up a little, (very little) before shooting these, Both taken at 1/60 sec

Comments would be greatly appreiciated.
Many thanks

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Hi and welcome to the crowd

These aren't to bad for a first go - at least your not asking "What does panning mean?"

You're on the right lines in pic 1 but you need to get into the fluidity required at swinging your body round to keep the same place on the car under the focusing mark on the camera, e.g. keep the red square on the no. 4 all the time as it passes. It's probably better if you increase the shutter speed a few notches until you're comfortable tracking cars and then drop it again to increase the movement blur.

I guess the second shot's from the pit wall and being more straight on to its front means the panning effect is less but it's generally sharper than the first shot.

You can practice on anything passing by - cars on the road outside is one option to get you into the motion required and a bit of experience of the speeds involved. Closer subject means faster panning and shallower approach angle to you (as in pic 1 compared to 2) means faster pannning. It's better to get the focus point locked on to the car in AI Servo mode a few seconds before you want to take the picture. Squeeze the shutter release as the car passes you and then 'follow through' with the camera rather than trying to stop your momentum dead - it generally trashes the picture as you can stop moving before the camera has done its stuff...

One shot focusing is no use for taking moving objects unless you're going to be very lucky / quick. Another way is to use manual focus and prefocus on a spot on the track and press the shutter at the correct time whan the car is about to go through the point - again practice and experience needed.


Andy

Thanks Adphoto,

Didn't know anything about AI Servo mode, both pictures were taken in One shot, Something i need to read up on, Must have been lucky although i did take lots of shots, Pic 1 being the best of the bunch. Did do the follow through when taking the pics, but as you say, it was hard to get the focus to run through the whole car.....i have lots of pics with the front out yet the rear of the car perfectly focused

Thanks for your help
Dave

Dave,

As soon as One Shot achieves focus lock on it's target it stops working so it's only working up to a certain point - after that it's not doing anything. Unless both shots are taken at what the camera classes as 'infinity' distance then it won't change focus between lock and shutter release, hence you get an unsharp picture.

Have a look in your manual for the differences between AI Focus, One Shot and AI Servo modes for the autofocus.

If you're getting the front out and the back OK or vice versa, it could be that the camera's focused on one end of the car (or you've thought it was in the middle but reaction timing meant it wasn't!) and then a lowish depth of field (wide aperture) has meant that not all the car is sharp. Being in the UK and not having sparkling sunlight like other parts of the world, we tend to need to pick wider apertures on the lens to get enough light in to be able to use a faster shutter speed... This leads to the effect you've seen. As you improve the panning, slower shutter speeds allow smaller apertures and more depth of field so more of the car in focus. You can always tweak it a bit by upping the ISO setting on the camera to help but you run into noise and quality issues if you go too far.

Clear as mud?

Here's one from the chicane at Croft - maybe not the best of pics but it hopefuly shows a few pointers...