Night Desert Off Road Truck Race

brandoncully

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First off, I just joined the forums so let me introduce myself. My name is Brandon, I am a 21 year old college student in San Marcos, CA. I have years of experience behind a camera as a hobby, and a year of working at a camera store.

Now for the important stuff:
I am going to be shooting an off road truck race in the middle of the desert this upcoming weekend. This will be the first race at night, so I am interested in the techniques you guys may approach this with.
I am currently equipped with a D80, a 12-24mm(which I personally love shooting for this event) and a SB800. I do have a generator, which would allow me to run some sort non-camera portable lighting (garage lights?).

Should I rent a second SB800 and run a slave flash closer to the vehicles while I stay further away?
Should I attempt longer shutter speeds with a flash to capture the movement and lighting of the trucks?
Ideas ideas ideas!
 
Sounds cool - As i haven't shot night racing before i would only be guessing at things you would need so i will leave that to those that know.

As for motion and panning, the flash will need to be adjusted to Rear Since on the D80. That way any motion blur you get would be behind the truck/car and not in front. The truck should pop as freeze action that way and be exposed correctly and the background would be be darker i would imagine. If you are shooting in a controled area of the track you might be able to set one flash to fill the background and one to pop the truck, but i'm just guessing on how well that would work. the 800 is a powerfull flash so it should be able to light up the forground on its own.

just my 2 cents.
 
Hi, I went to the 24 hours of nurburgring last year (probably going this year too) and took my camera with me (of course)

to make it simple: I couldn't shoot during the night

I took most of my shots in the evening or early morning, abusing of slow exposures/panning shots to cope with the lack of light.

the flash on rear will help, definately, but taking photos of running cars at night is not easy and/or will cost you some $$$ to have a decent equipement.


most important: have fun and be creative
 
A quick review of the Inverse Square Law may help you with your lighting decisions.

As mentioned configure your D80 for rear curtain sync.

Remember, with flash your aperture will control the exposure of the foreground (essentially your subject) and the shutter speed will control the exposure of the background. The closer the shutter speed gets to the D80's sync speed the darker the background will get.

Stopping the motion of the trucks will be handled by the short duration of the speedlight.
 

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