26.01.09
Shooting motorsports
Words by Will Cheung
Thanks to Lewis Hamilton, interest in Formula One has gone up a notch or two. While you may aspire to being trackside at a grand prix, it’s the privilege of very few – so if you fancy some petrol-fuelled excitement, set your sights lower and you’ll be onto a winner. There’s motorsport of all sorts – on two and four wheels – happening around the country. In our Events diary panel we highlight a few forthcoming events to consider.
A big part of successful action photography is getting a good spot, like the inside or the outside of a bend. Racers are going relatively slowly on bends and even though this still might be 70mph at least you stand a chance of tracking them with a long lens.
Furthermore, racing cars and bikes often bunch up on a bend and, particularly with bikes, they make an interesting shape, so compositions can be much more dynamic. Inevitably, such positions fill up quickly so get there in plenty of time to bag a good spot. Practice makes perfect so expect a high reject rate early on, and because of this take plenty of film and memory.
For shooting speed, setting the DSLR to give Fine/Large JPEG files is going to let you blast sequences of shots at several frames-persecond rather than using Raw format which takes longer to write. JPEG files are more limited in the control they offer on the computer, but get the exposure and whitebalance right at the time and you’ll be fine. For white-balance, either choose a manual setting to match the lighting or use custom white-balance and a gadget like the ExpoDisc.
All SLRs are autofocus and while AF can work, you may prefer setting focus to manual and taking control. One technique to try is prefocusing, where you focus on a particular spot on the road and take the shot just as the racer reaches that point.
Shutter speed selection is important because it’s this that will determine how much movement there is within the scene. Start by selecting shutter-priority AE mode and a speed of 1/500sec – if it’s a dull day, increase the ISO to allow this. Take a few shots of racers at full speed and check out the results on the camera monitor.
If they look so still that they don’t seem to be moving, try 1/250sec or even slower. Ideally you want a combination of a sharp subject but with some movement to imply speed and excitement. Good luck – if you come back with some great shots, we’d love to see them!
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To get a frame-filling image you’ll need a telephoto lens – a zoom that extends to 300mm is a good start, especially on DSLRs with APS-C sized sensors. Here, there’s a focal length magnification of 1.5x to 1.6x so a 300mm becomes an effective 450mm or 480mm respectively.
On Four Thirds system DSLRs like the Olympus E-510 tested in this issue, a 300mm focal length lens becomes the equivalent of 600mm. If you have a teleconverter take that along as well – a 1.4x model turns a 300mm lens into a 420mm with the loss of one f/stop. You’ll need to support such a long lens and a stout monopod is perfect. Giottos, Manfrotto and Velbon offer good models.
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