Racing June 14 - 20 pics

keith204 · Jun 17, 2008

Here I tried some different angles - up in the flag stand, through the front gate, etc. Tell me both goods & bads, please!

1.

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5.

6. "Bye Bye Dallas"

Mike would love this one...hehe

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20. Squiiiish

cszakolczai · Jun 17, 2008

I like them a lot. Number 1 is definitely the best haha. I used to help out with a dirt modified car. Big block chevy stuff... amazing at how much money was put into that engine.

DanV1317 · Jun 17, 2008

What kind of settings were you using for these pictures? I'm going to head up to the dirt track that i found near my house to see if i can get some decent pictures. The racing is mostly at night though with the lights on the track like in some of your pictures. Just trying to get an idea of where to start with my iso and stuff.

Big Mike · Jun 17, 2008

Great work.

keith204 · Jun 17, 2008

Did you guys catch #6? It probably won't mean as much to you guys... look at the spoiler of the #25 car, and the driver's name of the #22 car.

The photo below from an earlier week explains it more, as Dallas Scott (#22) points to Mike Watson's (#25) spoiler

keith204 · Jun 17, 2008

DanV1317 said:
What kind of settings were you using for these pictures? I'm going to head up to the dirt track that i found near my house to see if i can get some decent pictures. The racing is mostly at night though with the lights on the track like in some of your pictures. Just trying to get an idea of where to start with my iso and stuff.

Last year I shot at 1600 ISO, f/2.8, and used a flash a little. The trick when using a flash at a dirt track is to minimize the space between you and the subject. There is a lot of dirt floating through the air that will show up with flash, and minimizing distance minimizes dirt

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This year I don't hesitate to use 3200 ISO on my 40D's. Then, I can lose the flash and not have to deal with dust showing up. Sometimes I find that my 85mm f/1.8 comes in real handy when doing the natural light thing.

I have a fairly good panning hand (lots of practice) so I can shoot these cars at about 1/80th of a second and keep them crisp. (Now with my 70-200 f/2.8L IS w/ panning mode, I can do 1/50th...wahoo!) But starting out, you may want to aim for at least a 1/125th second shutter speed until you feel comfortable going slower.

I always complained that this track had terrible lighting and demanded a lot out of the equipment/photographer. However, since then I have been to a couple more tracks, which have far worse lighting. Not sure what your track will be like, but get used to the fact that you'll probably have to accept grainy or dusty photos in return for a fast shutter speed...both which can be minimized in post processing if needed.

Hope that helped a bit...I'm no pro, I just try to take pictures that the drivers & fans like.