First attempt at photographing rallying

[Britcarfan]

Hi. I usually photograph circuit racing but I decided to have a go at rallying. I went along to the Robin Hood Stages Rally on Sunday. Due to the fact that it was a late decision I didn't do my research before hand. I would appreciate any feedback and tips anyone has to offer. A few examples:











The rest can be seen here

Cheers,

Ray.

[sidaorb]

They look like great 1st attempts. Keep it up.

Carl

[james f]

i must say they look amazing !

[matt172]

yep really like those

[Britcarfan]

Thanks for three very positive replies guys. To be honest I wasn't expecting that but I am not complaining . I only went to one stage but next time I will move around a bit more. Thanks again.

[bramley]

Very good effort I reckon.

Out of interest what's your focussing technique for fast-moving things like these cars? Do you a) focus on a certain point and wait for the car to get to it then take the shot, or b) use servo focus or c) just hit the shutter button precisely when you want and rely on fast AF?

or something else?

[nick_bbb]

Great stuff

I'd like to see a little more panning to get some more movement in the background but that's just being petty, well done

[trackcar]

http://rsmp.zenfolio.com/p729544717?p

your site wont allow me to link, but this is chris cawthorne from my local MOT station

[Britcarfan]

bramley said:

Very good effort I reckon.

Out of interest what's your focusing technique for fast-moving things like these cars? Do you a) focus on a certain point and wait for the car to get to it then take the shot, or b) use servo focus or c) just hit the shutter button precisely when you want and rely on fast AF?

or something else?

I use continuous focus and normal focus tracking and press the focus button half way to start the focusing process as soon as the subject comes into view. Hope that makes sense!

[Britcarfan]

nick_bbb said:

Great stuff

I'd like to see a little more panning to get some more movement in the background but that's just being petty, well done

Thanks Nick. I agree about the panning, a few months ago I decided I was doing too many panning shots and I needed to get more head on stuff. Now I think I have gone too much in the other direction and I need to take a higher percentage of panning shots to find a better balance.

Cheers,

Ray.

[Matt1986]

I can't seem to find out from the clicking on the pictures, but what set up did you use? aperature, shutter speed, ISO? etc?

[john185k]

Hi there, great shots - do you have a hi res one of the second one down?

[Britcarfan]

Matt1986 said:

I can't seem to find out from the clicking on the pictures, but what set up did you use? aperature, shutter speed, ISO? etc?

If you go to the website and click on a picture you can then click on photo info to find out what settings I used.

[Matt1986]

cheers. great pics too.

[falcemob]

Excellent photos, did you do any post shot editing on them?

[UKBob]

Great pics, very nice

[Britcarfan]

falcemob said:

Excellent photos, did you do any post shot editing on them?

Auto levels, contrast and colour and a 2 stage unsharp mask on the full size pics. For the web the pics are then resized to 750 pixels across and sharpened again using the unsharp mask. Nothing to complex because I am relatively new to Photoshop.

[havoc]

The 3 Esky ones look really nice.

[srider]

I'd be very pleased with those, and I'm rarely pleased!

[Dibble]

[pedant]I think number two would have been improved by either a shallower DoF, or tighter focus/zoom on the car, eliminating the people in the background - they just detract from the picture for me[/pedant]

All IMHO of course. And if I could take pics half as good as those, I'd be happy!

Still find the "background people" in number two a little distracting though!