Racing

[Lyrics51]

NonEntity1 wrote:

The 12 Hours of Sebring event starts tomorrow morning with the 12 hour race on Saturday. The race teams are in running practice and qualifying type runs and there are literally thousands of people camping waiting for the gates to open tomorrow morning so they can go inside and camp some more.

I had to send a couple of detectives out to deal with some camper burglarizing and took the opportunity to escape the office. These are my warmup shots of the warmup races. Hopefully I can get more and better during the real races.

Tim

Tim, more would be good, but I don't think they could be a lot better! Those are great shots. I suppose having more than one car in a shot would be better, but as far as sharpness and color, I don't know what you could do to improve!

Glenn

[Driver3]

Great stuff, TIm.

I haven't been to the 12 hours since a factory Ford GT won it.

Dennis

[rhermans]

Magnificent shot's Tim,

got a few panning shots but none this good.

Ronny

[goldwing85]

Absolutely amazing shots. The clarity from your panning efforts is nothing short of amazing. I really want to see more of this event, so please post as amny as you can after the event.

Thanks

Brian

[ishino]

Absolutely superb Tim!

[JohnG]

really nice shots. Racing isn't my thing, but these look very good. You've got your technique down nicely - good colors and good sharpness.

Nicely done!

[Dal1970]

Your panning technique is superb.



Please say that these were the best from 100's of bad ones....LOL



Looking forward to more excellent shots.



Dal

[snostorm]

Hi Tim,

Excellent work! Especially considering you did these with an MF lens (You did mention the Tam 180, and I assumed the SP180 f2.5).

I was wondering if setting the SR at 100mm was accidental, or is this a trade secret for using SR with panning, or maybe you just had SR off for these and the lens just shows up from the last SR setting.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing more from the race. I know you'll have fun.

Scott

[NonEntity1]

Thanks everyone, it was a nice opportunity to practice as I did not have to elbow my way to a spot with a clear view.

Dal, you are pretty close, out of 290 about 60 actually were decent enough to play with. I picked these ones based on being either the sharpest or the car having a fancier paint job.

Scott, I wish I hadpicked up on the SR settingas quickly as you did. It was not until I was done shooting that I noticed it was still set to 100mm. I don't know that it made much difference.

I think panning with a manual focus may be easier than auto (never tried it though). I just prefocus on the section of track where I want to make the shot, pick up the car approaching me in the viewfinder, and follow it through shooting a three shot burst. If there is any secret it is keeping your upper body and arms rigid and pivoting only at the waist.

Thanks again for the kind words, I am looking forward to trying it with some different lens combinations.

Tim

[Mark1616]

NonEntity1 wrote:

I think panning with a manual focus may be easier than auto (never tried it though). I just prefocus on the section of track where I want to make the shot, pick up the car approaching me in the viewfinder, and follow it through shooting a three shot burst. If there is any secret it is keeping your upper body and arms rigid and pivoting only at the waist.

I'm not sure what lens you are using, but I always use AF on AI Servo/AF-C mode when shooting motorsports. I get a very high amount of keepers when shooting in this way. I have previously used the pre-focus method but only would have a couple of usable ones from each sequence. Give it a bash, as long as you lens focuses reasonably quickly you should be fine, especially as focus does not need to change much when doing panning.

The last thing is which option to use for focus points. I've tried both centre point and all points and I can't decide which I find best so give it a bash!

Anyway..... nice sharp vibrant shots and like the rest looking forward to seeing more!!

Edit - Just realised you did say what the lens was.... so now I should say I'm not sure how fast it AFs.