Practical Photography

Photographing cars at great speed can be very hard, for a good shot you need to keep the car in focus and positioned well in the frame. All photography is subject to creativity but stick to the rules and only when you’ve mastered this should you look at blurring images or off the page compositions.

Keep your lens long, close in tight and frame the car.Shoot the cars from different angles, down low is usually a good technique . If you want to shoot drivers in their cars, you will have to use your flash as you can sometimes lose their features in the shadows of their helmet and position yourself properly to capture the moment, you can get a good idea from the atmosphere about what is going on and where a good shot may appear.
Make sure the car fills the frame it is what you are there to see and should be the main focal point, the track and crowds or walls around the car are very uninteresting subjects, with the exception of using a wide angle lens and panning with a car. This will blur the background and the front and back of the car, giving the impression of immense speed.
When it comes to getting the best exposure, you can usually trust your cameras built in meter except if you are shooting black cars close up in this case you may have to underexpose to compensate. I usually shoot using a small aperture mode, the smallest f-stop I can afford.  The cars are moving way too fast to use even best hypersonic focusing motors so alwaysavoid autofocus. Sometimes you can find a slower speed area a corner or pit lane entrance, where your predictive-auto focus will track the car successfully, but your camera will only focus on one area of the car. The best solution is to pre-focus on a spot on the track, and release the shutter button so that the shutter opens at the second the car is in focus.

These cars move at amazing speeds approaching 245 mph, so using a 300mm lens, your depth of field will be measured in inches. You need to estimate how far the car will travel during the lag between squeezing the shutter release and the time the exposure is made. This is very hard and you will find you get a lot of poor results but with practice you will judge much better and achieve some great shots.

You can use your autofocus if you are panning. A well thought out panning shot will keep the majority of the car in focus with a blurred background. Blurred tires also help to add to the impression of speed, this effect is created by panning with the car then releasing the shutter gently. With their top speeds at around 245 mph, these cars are traveling almost 3 feet in 1/100th of a second! You will have to practice following the cars without shooting any frames then when you feel comfortable, keep the car in the frame and pan smoothly. Use an Image Stabilized lens wherever possible and the fastest shutter speed you can.

I have some great pics in my house of Drifting and these were done by Photographer Laura Sherran at Doristars, these images show how you can keep the car in focus but still give the impression of movement and most importantly SPEED!

Related Products You May Wish To Look At
Contact ConstructionTradex for a huge number of Mini Diggers for sale and hire.
ECU Remap available here
Forklift available here
Speed Boat Insurance get a quote now.