Dusty Subaru Impreza action shots!

[Sw1tchFX]

I've never done any serious action shots, and since nobody has really started any athletics in my area yet, I had one of my friends drive his Subaru on some of the local dirt roads to kind of give the rally feel of what the higher end Impreza STi does.

These are my fist attempts at taking real shots of cars, and IMO, they are a total disaster for 3 reasons:

1. I don’t entirely know what I’m doing when it comes to stuff like this .
2. I’m on 35mm so this is bad enough for experimentation so this whole thing was a guessing game, and I didn’t really know when my shots came out wrong until they were developed.
3. I’m using a manual focus camera so about 80% of the shots on the roll were out of focus. Damn.

When I buy a D70 soon, I’m going to try this again and (hopefully) be more successful.

IMO, these are the only ones that came out OK. I’m still not satisfied, but oh well. They look much better in B+W than they do color, so I converted most of them in Photoshop. Tell me what you think!

All of these images were taken with my 80-200mm using Kodak Elitechrome ISO100 slide film.

And of course, all images are ok to edit!

1a.
Using the green channel:

1b.
Removed, almost same as above, except in the almost exact blue channel. Here's the color version:

2.

3.

 

[Edu_Lopes]

Hello Switch, how doin' ?

I liked the second and third shot, the composition worked very well in my opinion, I would like to see it in colors, and the third is the best.

- Sorry if wrote something wrong, english is not mother tongue.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

Thanks, for the 3rd shot, I wanted to get a really good backlit shot of the action, but my freind had to leave too soon. It was the last shot we did.

The only shot I have that i've edited and gone through in color is the first one.

I'll see what i can do for the 2nd one.

here are 2 more that i've uploaded:

 

[xfloggingkylex]

While they are all good shots, the one I like the best is the last you posted. it is IMO the only shot that really gives the feeling of action (which is the goal). The first shots you have the wheels in the pictures but the shutter is so fast that it freezes them in place, whereas the last shot you get the blur of the wheels. Also blurred backgrounds are important since blurred or unblurred really determine that action feel as well. While 2 is a nice looking shot, the clearness of the background takes away from it IMO. 3 is great because you can see the wind blowing the dust away and if just gives that feeling of a car coming down a dirt road. Still, picture 5 is my favorite by a good deal. Great work.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

80% of my roll was shot under 1/500 of a second, and most of them came out awful because of camera shake/me being a complete newbie at wtuff like this. The only shots that came out reasonably good were the ones shot at 1/500th and 1/1000th of a second for the exception of the last shot posted.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

Here's a color shot done of #2:

 

[meotter]

i've been practicing shooting action cars lately. a few things that help a lot, learning to pan at the same speed as a car, shooting about 1/80 or 1/60 in good outdoor light (in shutter priority mode) will give you good action in the wheels and blur the background a bit.

monopods are your friend.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

That is exactly what I did with most of the shots that I panned. In a couple cases though, I stepped up my shutter speed to about 1/125.

Also, my camera doesn't have shutter priority, only aperture and full manual.

 

[jake]

ooh i like number two..

 

[meotter]

i like number 3 the best btw.