Drag racing, advice needed!

[Frisky]

Went to a drag meet today, the weather and lighting was really poor, raining one minute and sunny the next(british summer!)

I tried loads of different settings but struggled to get anything really sharp.

I was about 20 m away with my 1D3 and 70-200.

The guy on the back wheel was doing about 120-140 and the other guy 160+

Is it just panning improvement needed?

Wish I took the monopod with me.

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[Gerafix]

Is that a 1d Mark III? I see the first one was ISO 800 with a shutter of 1/1600, focus seems spot on and if the speeds you are saying are correct, I am thinking it is a shutter speed problem. Second one is ISO 400 and a shutter of 1/800 and focus also seems spot on but is even more blurry. I am wondering if you tried ISO 1600 or 3200 (don't think noise is much a problem with the 1d's?) with a much faster shutter, that would seem to fix things, from where I am sitting, I think.

Ahh... you're panning, was the IS mode 2 turned on with the 70-200? And if it was I'm out of ideas!

[Mark1616]

It is either a focus or panning issue. They don't look in focus to me as at those shutter speeds even with a poor technique you should get agood result. Which focus mode are you using? All points or single?

Is IS on or not? Which mode?

[Frisky]

Mark, I was using single point focusing and it was the centre one in use.

By IS do you mean IS on the lens, it is a non IS lens.

Cheers Dave

[Mark1616]

OK, that's fine at these shutter speeds you should not be using IS, and in honesty I don't use it for any panning shots, the monopod does the trick for me.

I take it you are using AI Servo with the middle focus point?

[TG]

Have to agree with Mark, your shutter speed should not have been an issue, looks like images are just out of focus, as Mark mentioned were you using AI Servo mode? Or you might have a Camera or lens AF issue. Do you have a 1D MKIII with the AF problems?

I have the 70-200 non IS lens as well and its my fastest AF lens andone of the sharpest.

[JimC]

I'm seeing lots of jaggies in those images (as if they've been resized significantly). The file sizes are large enough so that jpeg compression shouldn't have been much of an issue at those sizes (unless they've been resized more than once using different jpeg quality/compression settings).

Are those heavily cropped and enlarged? If so, that may be causing your issues (not enough pixels representing your subject, with the resizing algorithms you used causing even more issues).

[Mark1616]

JimC wrote:

I'm seeing lots of jaggies in those images (as if they've been resized significantly). The file sizes are large enough so that jpeg compression shouldn't have been much of an issue at those sizes (unless they've been resized more than once using different jpeg quality/compression settings).

Are those heavily cropped and enlarged? If so, that may be causing your issues (not enough pixels representing your subject, with the resizing algorithms you used causing even more issues).

Exactly what I thought but didn't ask as I was basing this on the 20m range which with the 70-200mm should be simple. However if the distance is different then this could certainly be the cause.

[JimC]

If they were downsized at some point, then enlarged from the smaller version later to what we see posted, that would also explain the problems.

On the surface, it looks like they don't have enough pixels representing the subjects (perhaps from cropping and enlarging, enlarging a previously downsized version, or something similar)

[Frisky]

Thanks for the replies chaps.

They were cropped quite a bit.

Here is one from the same shoot which hasn't been cropped.

I will try another bike meet and see if I can resolve the problem.








Cheers Dave