critique me please: autocross

[S14]

I've been shooting our local BMW chapters autocross events for the past 2 years, and I kind of feel like i've plateau'd on the photos. Would you fine gentlemen have any suggestions on how to improve? The good, the bad & the ugly, let me have it!

These are straight off the camera (D7100) zero post processing. If you look at this album, all the the autocross albums are my photo's.


https://www.flickr.com/photos/rmcbmwcca/sets/



DSC_8076 by RMC BMW CCA, on Flickr

DSC_8819 by RMC BMW CCA, on Flickr

DSC_8511 by RMC BMW CCA, on Flickr

DSC_8549 by RMC BMW CCA, on Flickr

DSC_8588 by RMC BMW CCA, on Flickr

[JonBoy1979]

1. Focus appears to be off slightly and the shutter speed is either too slow (for a crisp shot) or you didn't pan well enough to keep the car's edges clean.

2. Nice attempt at panning but the shutter speed is too slow for your skill level. Not sure if it's in focus or not - the whole shot is blurry, primarily due to the shutter speed, I think.

3. Same as 2.

4. Decent shot - some panning action, the car looks fairly crisp, there's a sense of motion, etc, etc. Would be nice to frame the shot so that the car is more to the right, driving into the picture rather than positioned right in the center of the picture.

5. Same as 2, though a little better. The center framing doesn't work for me - I'd prefer the car lower or further left in the shot.

Honestly, I think you need to work on picking the correct shutter speed for your shots. After that, work on framing. I have a feeling your focus is also off somewhat but it's tough to tell from these shots.

Panning is best done when swinging parallel to the car. That means that you should typically be on the INSIDE of the car when it turns so that you are in the center of the turn and the car stays roughly equidistant to you during the shot. If you're outside the corner, get in the middle so that the car is roughly parallel to you when you start your pan shot. Otherwise, the car is moving into and out of your focal plane and it'll be blurry.

Are you shooting in Tv mode, to ensure you get proper shutter speeds?

[BMWJNKY]

jonboy hit the nail on the head. Only other thing I can think of is what focus mode are you using? Using a focus mode that will adjust focus on a moving object till the shutter is released may also help with the image quality. Also a polarized filter will help with the reflections on the windows.

[S14]

Thanks for the inputs guys! We had our last event on saturday, and I tried a few different settings, and was conscious of the things you pointed out JonBoy.

1. Focus appears to be off slightly and the shutter speed is either too slow (for a crisp shot) or you didn't pan well enough to keep the car's edges clean.

Yes, I see that now! The photo's looked sharp on my camera and in iPhoto on my 13" mac... Blown up a bit and I can see that it's not tac sharp. Odd though, since I was shooting at 125 that day, which I thought was plenty safe to make the car crisp when panning. This weekend I bumped up the shutter speed a bit more to try and lock in the focus better.

2. Nice attempt at panning but the shutter speed is too slow for your skill level. Not sure if it's in focus or not - the whole shot is blurry, primarily due to the shutter speed, I think.

3. Same as 2.

Again, When looking in review on the camera, I thought 125 was safe!

4. Decent shot - some panning action, the car looks fairly crisp, there's a sense of motion, etc, etc. Would be nice to frame the shot so that the car is more to the right, driving into the picture rather than positioned right in the center of the picture.

Thanks, I thought this one turned out pretty well too. This is straight off the camera, so moving the crop in post down to the lower right 1/3rd would be an easy fix. Speaking of that, I really need a solution for post processing!

5. Same as 2, though a little better. The center framing doesn't work for me - I'd prefer the car lower or further left in the shot.

Honestly, I think you need to work on picking the correct shutter speed for your shots. After that, work on framing. I have a feeling your focus is also off somewhat but it's tough to tell from these shots.

I'm wondering if the focus is a result of some trigonometry. I think my camera is locking onto the subject when it's say 75 feet away at a 45° angle and I start snapping photos on continuous burst. By the time the car is 90° and moving the fastest across my plane, it is only say 50 feet away, yet my focus point is still 75 feet. I'm not sure if my camera can continuously to adjust the focus when in burst mode. It probably can, but I haven't figured out how to manipulate it that well.

Panning is best done when swinging parallel to the car. That means that you should typically be on the INSIDE of the car when it turns so that you are in the center of the turn and the car stays roughly equidistant to you during the shot. If you're outside the corner, get in the middle so that the car is roughly parallel to you when you start your pan shot. Otherwise, the car is moving into and out of your focal plane and it'll be blurry.

Are you shooting in Tv mode, to ensure you get proper shutter speeds?

Not sure what Tv mode is, is that a canon thing? I'm using a Nikon D7100, in manual mode. I was using just shutter priority, but it was terrible for black cars. Unfortunetly I cannot control the schedule, and shooting mid day meant the blacks were just dark blobs. So I set my shutter speed, then manually bump up the aperture until it's 2 or 3 stops overexposed. I figure the good ones I can bring back down in post (again, I need a good machine for this) but it would be better to have the background over exposed a bit than the subject way underexposed.

This weekend I tried shooting from the middle of the corner. I haven't sorted through all the photo's yet, but it definitely was easier to pan the subject!

jonboy hit the nail on the head. Only other thing I can think of is what focus mode are you using? Using a focus mode that will adjust focus on a moving object till the shutter is released may also help with the image quality. Also a polarized filter will help with the reflections on the windows.

I was using spot focus before. This last weekend I changed the focus button from the 1/2 shutter point to the AE-L/AE-F button which I'm getting used to, but I think I like it better. I also set the focus mode to AF-C with a single meter point in the center. Some of these shots, the car is doing 60-70mph, so it's rather hard to frame while panning!

[nathancarter]

Throwing out some thoughts:

Changing to back-button focus will almost certainly improve your results. Put it in continuous-focus mode (on Canon, called AI Servo), hold down the focus button, pan so that your focus point stays on the exact same spot on the car, and squeeze off a few shots.

If you're using a relatively slow shutter speed on a bright day - and 1/125 is pretty slow in direct sun - then you'll be using a narrow aperture (high f-stop) which results in a lot of depth-of-field. Based on that, you actually have a fair bit of wiggle-room when focusing. Not enough to make a car look sharp at 50ft when you focused at 75ft, but enough that a few inches won't matter.

Burst mode may help as well. Fire off three to five shots while panning, and one of them will probably stand out from the others. Are you putting the camera in burst mode, or just mashing the shutter button repeatedly?

If your lens has stabilization, you may need to turn it off so that it doesn't fight back against your panning. Some Canon lenses have multiple modes of stabilization, including one that's made specifically for panning shots. Your kit lens might have stabilization but maybe not 2-stage like that, so you might need to turn it off entirely.

On Canon, Tv mode is shutter priority; Av mode is aperture priority. Dunno what they're labeled on Nikon. When using either of these semi-automatic modes, your metering mode will have a very strong influence on your exposure; spot metering will screw you up based on the color of the car. If the light isn't changing (full sun or full overcast) then manual mode is a better choice. If it's partially cloudy and windy, so you're rapidly changing between cloudy and direct sun, then the semi-auto modes can help a lot - as long as you use the right metering mode.


I'm going to disagree with the above advice to increase your shutter speed as a crutch. Instead, make it more of a mental effort in precision panning: Choose a single focus point in the camera, use back-button continuous focus, and stick that focus point on a wing mirror, a fender grill, a side corner marker, anything that's a high-contrast area of the car. Focus your chi to keep that focus point precisely in the same spot on the car, for the entirety of the panning motion.