Hot Summer Nights

Are meant for Sprint Car racing, and now that its starting to get cooler, the joke on the infield is the snowcross shooter will come alive, when the night time temps dip into single digits.

One thing as the summer winds down is you find the sun sets pretty quickly, and you had better be thinking night mode, when you pull into the track, since those hot summer nights are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

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Boss,

For my tastes, I really like them both, but something about #1 catches my eye. I think it is the blurred background and the fact you can see into the cock pit.


Sprinters have always been my favorite.

Thanks for sharing.

4T

Very nice! I love the sprints. Is that just track lighting (very good if it is! The light at a typical track is usually not that good) or did you use a strobe of some kind. If so what was your lighting setup?

texaskev wrote in post #10752490
Is that just track lighting

Just track lighting.........I refuse to use flash, as it just looks like a valet has parked the car, and gives the impresson of somebody sitting in the car making "vroom-vroom" noises, as they pretend to be racing.

All the other photographers there think I am nuts, and you see them flashing away, with 580EX's or bare bulb Normans, but most of the drivers are seeing my stuff in the weekly program, and then adding me on facebook, and then seeing more stuff, and loving it.

I regularly print this stuff as 16x20's for drivers and it stops folks in their tracks.

This is about speed, colour and night...........so thats how I shoot it.

Thanks for the info. I'll be shooting sprints this fall so I'll try that if the light is reasonable.

This place is way darker then my home track, but I found a sweet spot and went to work, and you would never know this was near the end of a dusty 100 lapper.

Flash at the races is like a pair of handcuffs IMO.

But a few of the drivers know if they see my flash going off, its a great thing, as that means they are in victory lane.

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As always...you do great panning work.

You're right about that last modified photo, you can't tell it's the end of a 100 lapper where from the stands it's like looking through fog usually after that many laps.

I figured out shooting snowcross at 40 below that snowdust is no different then dust at a dirt track. The flash bounces off the dust that is between the lens and the car or sled, giving you strange little circles, that I just refuse to sit and edit out.

Plus alot of guys will have some sort of reflective decals on their cars, and that plays all sorts of havoc with a flash. Even in Victory Lane sometimes.

I'm actually looking forward to getting a couple of bodies that will allow a cleaner high ISO, so that I can shoot a little differently then I do at the present time.

OH, and a 135L..........as its the lens I consider to be the king of the night.

What camera, lens, and ISO do you normally use for shots like these?

50D's, either a 24-70mm L or a 70-200mm L...........and whatever ISO it takes to get my shutter speeds to what I want, as there is no set formula I use, as it depends on whether I am shooting pans from the side, head on shots that are backlit, or head on shots that are front lit, or if the track is rough or smooth will also have a bearing. Even the type of car on the track will have a bearing as to what S/S and ISO I will use, as they all corner differently. I even find a difference needed between shooting the 360's and the 410's, as the 410's are much more violent in their acceleration.

It's alot of trail and error, and then toss in that every week, the light is changing and the sprint cars don't always run at the exact same time, it makes you work, but the effort is worth it, since I don't end up with basically the identical shot week after week.

Thanks. You do take great shots and I'm always looking to learn from those with skills such as yours. I'm still plugging away at Williams Grove, Lindas, and occassionally Big Diamond here in my area, getting a few good shots now and then. Lots to learn.

Thanks.....I just try harder then most.

This is alot harder then shooting in the daylight, and the fact that escapes many is a heat race is often over in under 2:00 minutes if it goes green flag to flag. So you don't get alot of time to think things through.

I would think you could do some "dragging the shutter, slower shutterspeed flash stuff " that would have lot of color pop and some real blur action so it didn't look like a parked car.

But maybe that is just me.

I really like the sunset colors (or colours as you boys from the great white north say) and the black-ness of the night stuff is nice but just doesn't have the same impact, at least in my opinion.

If there is nothing but the black of night in the background, how is firing a flash going to make it look any better then to light up the dust particles hanging in the air.

And a flash freezes action, and I don't think being able to read the word "Hoosier" on the tires really takes much skill IMO. Dragging the shutter and second curtain sync is highly unpredictable.

This is racing under the lights, and I shoot it as such, not to make cars look like cartoonish cardboard cut outs.

Of course you could show us the photos of sprint cars that you have taken to show me I am wrong.

I can't say that I've really played with the whole "dragging the shutter" much at the NASCAR events, maybe I'll try that when the sun goes down this year.

It's tough because they keep up back a bit from the track and I push my 580EX II at +3 to toss light way out there on the track which drains the batteries really fast (and I try to save them for the victory lane stuff).

I've dropped the shutterspeed as low as 1/60 to get cars on track panning and some results are not bad, but shooting at night, under the lights just makes the images look "blah" somewhat boring and flat, I don't know how to make the night time stuff look interesting. I may try some more creative stuff this year with really slow exposures and different blur effects just to see what I can get.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not disagreeing with you, just wondering out loud what is possible (stuff I haven't tried yet).

I shot this first NASCAR shot with my flash at 1/60 but I don't think I have shot anything slower.

The second shot was at the fair with my flash at 1/15 and I think the effect is really cool, I understand that a fair ride is much slower than a race car and I was able to get much closer so the distance to subject is a big factor . . .

I'll see what I can come up with this year if I can get a pass to cover the races.

Also I'm not trying to jack up your thread with my images, but you asked (If you want me to take them off I will)

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