Audi Club autocross this weekend at Maywood Park horsetrack in Maywood, IL. These pictures were taken by an extremely talented friend of mine. His website is www.formulafoto.com

 

that last pic is perfect....such a hot stance!

 

Where would i find out about being able to enter in these events, I'd of loved to do an autox this weekend?

Nice photos I too like #3 the best, but they're kinda big so its harder to see the composition.

 

loving the DOF on the last one

....but prefer the lighting in the second one

 

You can find out more info on our club autocrosses, driving schools, an other events at www.audichicago.org

We had 68 cars this weekend and 36 of them were non-Audi/VAG products, so it's a nice mixture.

 

Mmmm, nice seeing a DS/DS flying around on a track. Now you got me thinking about different wheels (wife is getting tired of me complaining about the R/F tires).

I like photo one the best as it truly conveys you pushing the car to 10/10ths. The other two look like you're parked on the track with the wheels and tire tread tack sharp. Only the body lean (car and driver) lend to the subject of motion. Maybe I'm just too spoiled with Jim's racing photos.

Very well done photos otherwise though and would love to have similiar ones of my car.

 

Yeah I think he has to use a super-high shutter speed on the head-on ones because the distance to the subject is changing so fast. I'm obviously not a photographer, but I think that's why you don't get the motion blur that you do with the side-on shots.

This one shows a little more motion - I'm just getting out of the start gate here...

 

I'm lousy at this type of photography too.

Jim (jimz68), care to share some recommended shutter speeds for car racing photos?

 

I just resized them to make them viewable on a normal monitor (I was having problems with them even on my 1600x1200 resolution).

I'm not 6'8", but the two general principles I've followed are:

• For head on shots, shoot wide open so that you neutralize the background as much as possible with the limited DOF

• for panning shots, shoot shutterpriority at roughtly 1/the speed of the car. So if the car was travelling 60 MPH, your shutterspeed would be 1/60th (as a starting point) to capture some background blur and rotation in the tires.

 

Thanks for the link to Jamie's site. Impressive stuff and it's interesting to see he frequents the same tracks I do: Road America, Milwaukee, Cleveland... .

Yeah, you do want to get some rotation in the tires/wheels, especially with the side shots, and I think 1/speed (in MPH) is a pretty good rule of thumb. Maybe a bit higher shutter speed for starters and then drop down. Sometimes it's amusing to go really slow and get lots of blur, but your hit rate will really drop off and only part of the car will be sharp even when you do get it right. It makes for a nice effect, though. You can see it in that last shot where the door number is sharp but not much else is.

Generally, higher shutter speeds for when they're coming right at you, and something in-between for in-between angles where you can see the wheels and want at least a bit of blur.

Mark

 

What Mark said..
I tend to shoot in Manual Mode, taking incident meter readings or using the "Sunny 16" rule. Head on stuff, I usually use 640th @ 7.1 or there abouts.(shooting at ISO 100) For pans, anything up to 250th depending on the distance to the subject and it's speed.
A good book is John Blakemore's "Freezing Speed-Techniques of Grand Prix Photography". Although it's out of print, you can still find it on the web. His stuff is AMAZING! And all before Auto-Focus. John's the one who told me to turn the meter off, and learn to "read" the light.
Hppy Shooting!
Jim

 

Sunny 16 checking in here!

I have a bad habit of spot metering.
Shhhh, every once in a while I'll switch my cameras to matrix just for ***** and giggles.

Juan

 

Thank you for all the great info everyone!

Shutter speed ~= 1/MPH speed as a starting point is a simple enough of a rule that I could remember it.

Jim, thanks for the book recomendation. I found a used copy on the web as per your suggestion at a reasonable price (unlike the ones on amazon). Looks like it will be great learning material.

Cheers!

 

Let me know when you get it. I can have it autographed for you.
Jim

 

That one is my fav. I think its awesome when the inside rear tire lifts! The numbers are cool too!