Motor Sport Photography - Road Racing - Page 5 - Setting up your camera.
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Setting up the camera

  • For shots in the pits etc normal rules of photography apply so I won't go into that here.
  • Trackside.
  • .. ISO set to the lowest possible to allow me to usually shoot ~1/250 to 1/500 @ F8 .
  • .. In poor lighting conditions I don;t have any problems shooting at ISO 1600 and wide open if need be.
  • .. I always shoot RAW - To give me more control over the final picture.
  • .. I always use Autofocus with AI Servo (Automatic focus tracking of moving objects)
  • .. I have been using the centre focussing point active in the past however I will try all focus points active as it may provide better focussing accuracy on moving objects - havn't made a final decision yet.
  • .. Tv (shutter priority) as I feel shutter speed in motor sport is more important than DOF
  • ....... If lighting conditions are extreemly poor I will either be in Av (Aperture priority) or manual mode.
  • .. Shutter speed is is normally set between 1/250 and 1/500 for normal head on shots. You don't want everything pin sharp (high shutter speeds) you want to see wheel motion if possible . This is variable depending on car speed, distance, angle the car is to the photographer and the focal length of the lens.
  • .. 1/100 to 1/1/25 sec for panning shots as a starting point .
  • .. Continuous shooting mode is on, very ocassionaly it will be in high speed mode (40D).
  • .. I have been using evaluative metering. (I am going to try centre weighted averaging next time)

Some Examples

Even though this is drag racing it is a prime example of when I use Manual exposure mode.

Canon 40D with Canon 70-300 IS lens hand held - IS on.

ISO 1600 1/160 @ F5. F=170mm

1/125 @ F16 (the increased DOF doesn't really matter in panning shots as the background is blurred anyway.

Shutter speed of 1/320 - the writing on the tyres is blurred however the centres are not , probably should have been taken @ 1/200