When photographing in bright/harsh light....

You really wouldn't

have believed how happy and relaxed the race was after this for the

photogs as they all knew they had a good sale. I actually had radio

credentials, not photo, as I broadcast the race with KNAC in Long Beach

for twenty years, and since the access was the same and I could do my

live reporting from the corners, it worked-out great. To this day many

people comment on the incident when they see me again, including Bill

Motta. I'm still friends with Tracy and she still looks good -- but

where she got her credential is a story yet to be told.

750mm is limiting for general use, and for me 600 is about the max that can work in most areas, although I normally use a 500 with film and a 300 2.8 w/TC14 with dig. Is that a crop or full-frame, jpg-source or raw-source? I'm curious if that was from the vintage race as I think it's a March-BMW F2 car from about '75 (March 742/752), no?

Jay, that's a great story I can understand you're increased popularity after arranging that event and I'm sure Pat Behar swore lifelong fealty to you afterwards, but I'm afraid I can't tell anyone you?re the originator of "Show us your?" My dear mother and two sisters instilled in me at an early age the need to treat women with respect and deference and if I don't I'm going to get a series of dope slaps from all three of them, so I'll just keep that bit of knowledge to myself. ;-)

 

I've done an Internet search and managed to find a few used booksellers with copies of "Passion and Precision" in stock for $40-$45. I?ll check with them further tomorrow, but if none of them work out I may take advantage of your kind offer for the PDF files.

 

That dark and disappointing shot is from last week's Brian Redman International Challenge at Road America. The two cars pictured are part of the Historic Grand Prix race, which attracted a field of 30 F1 cars dating from 1970 to 1983. That particular March 741, Cosworth powered, of course, is a regular at the vintage races at Road America.

 

I cropped that shot from its JPG 3000 x 2000 pixel size out of the camera to a 2700 x 1650 TIFF, so it's not a small portion of a much larger image. It was, of course, shrunk down to 800 x 489 for attachment to my response on PN. It's too dark because of a cloudbank that rolled through and I couldn't find the right shutter speed quick enough. That frame filling, "don?t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes" thing is something I've been experimenting with lately since seeing a Bernard Cahier shot from the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix of the chaos of the first lap as seen from the hairpin. I?m not sure where these experiments will lead or whether they?ll be successful, but I'm curious to see the results I get.

 

Besides the 500 Nikkor Reflex I'm also using the Nikon 70-200 f2.8 AFS, with or without a Tamron 1.4 tele-extender, a 28-105mm f3.5-4.5, an 85mm f1.8 and a 20mm f2.8, all Nikons. The 70-200 is a great lense with wonderful bokeh, but it has to be used up close to eliminate distracting backgrounds. Until I can afford a 300 f2.8 I'll either have to make do or try rentals.

Jay, that's a great story I can understand you're increased popularity after arranging that event and I'm sure Pat Behar swore lifelong fealty to you afterwards, but I'm afraid I can't tell anyone you're the originator of "Show us your?" My dear mother and two sisters instilled in me at an early age the need to treat women with respect and deference and if I don't I'm going to get a series of dope slaps from all three of them, so I'll just keep that bit of knowledge to myself. ;-)

 

I've done an Internet search and managed to find a few used booksellers with copies of "Passion and Precision" in stock for $40-$45. I'll check with them further tomorrow, but if none of them work out I may take advantage of your kind offer for the PDF files.

 

That dark and disappointing shot is from last week's Brian Redman International Challenge at Road America. The two cars pictured are part of the Historic Grand Prix race, which attracted a field of 30 F1 cars dating from 1970 to 1983. That particular March 741, Cosworth powered, of course, is a regular at the vintage races at Road America.

 

I cropped that shot from its JPG 3000 x 2000 pixel size out of the camera to a 2700 x 1650 TIFF, so it's not a small portion of a much larger image. It was, of course, shrunk down to 800 x 489 for attachment to my response on PN. It's too dark because of a cloudbank that rolled through and I couldn't find the right shutter speed quick enough. That frame filling, "don?t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes" thing is something I've been experimenting with lately since seeing a Bernard Cahier shot from the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix of the chaos of the first lap as seen from the hairpin. I?m not sure where these experiments will lead or whether they?ll be successful, but I'm curious to see the results I get.

 

Besides the 500 Nikkor Reflex I'm also using the Nikon 70-200 f2.8 AFS, with or without a Tamron 1.4 tele-extender, a 28-105mm f3.5-4.5, an 85mm f1.8 and a 20mm f2.8, all Nikons. The 70-200 is a great lense with wonderful bokeh, but it has to be used up close to eliminate distracting backgrounds. Until I can afford a 300 f2.8 I'll either have to make do or try rentals.

OOOPS!...Sorry about posting that last response twice. I was trying to correct a punctuation problem where PN turns an apostophe in Microsoft word into a question mark. Sorry about that.

Err, regarding the "show us your..." we had an incident at Rockingham the other week like that! One of the cars we have is sponsored by a lap-dancing club and of course some of the girls are there to do the grid and promotions etc. Of course, something like that was going to be inevitable - but I had a laugh (being female) getting lots of shots of the photogs getting shots of the girls. Ended up with some good wind-up material.

 

Anyway, going back to the original question - sometimes harsh light can help a shot or give it a particular look, but it can be frustrating if that's not what you want or are really having genuine problems. Part of it stems from the fact that racing cars have very reflective surfaces due to the nature of the paint finish, and if you, as I shoot stock cars (yep, we've got something similar to NASCAR in the UK) you've also got the polymer windscreens / windows as well.

 

One thing that I find really helps is a good deep lens hood (have a nice one on my 100-400) as it cuts out on a lot of stray light and flare - I always shoot with a hood even in dull conditions and irrespective of the lens. Hoods are great for protecting ends of lenses from knocks - inevitable when working down on the fenceline. And I don't use filters...

 

Another thing that is important is to get the metering right. With digital you do have the problem of not enough dynamic range on the sensor, so you sometimes do have to compromise on shadow detail and blown highlights. What I tend to do in situations where this is likely to happen is to use my handheld meter to get a reading off a mid-grey surface for the shutter speed or aperture that I want to use and then input that reading into the camera via full manual metering mode. It isn't a perfect solution, but I find it is the best compromise - with my CF4 set for 1/3 stops, I can fine tweak that to get what I want if the situation warrents it. I will lose some shadow detail this way, but I also don't blow out the highlights.

 

In pit and paddock situations, fill flash helps here too, as you then don't have to cope with the heavy shadows, but where you can't use flash, you have to sometimes resign yourself for either over or under-exposing some parts of the image - as shown in the attached example.

 

I was shooting a driver signing autographs from inside a dark-ish garage on a really bright sunny day (was lunchtime), using fill flash in manual exposure mode to bring out the detail in the faces of the people in the queue. As you can see, the sky is totally blown out, but I really don't think it matters as I got the shot I wanted.<div></div>

I picked up a 0.6 ND filter today. A 0.6 means the loss of 2 f-stops which on the Nikon D70 will be equivalent to the speeds I'm used to shooting with Fuji Velvia 50. I'll let you know what I learn after this weekend's CART race at Road America.

I used a B&W 0.6 neutral density filter for the first time at last weekend's Champ Car race at Road America. On the Nikon D70 with its minimum ISO of 200, the 2 stop filter factor of the ND 0.6 meant that shots done wide open at f2.8 had shutter speeds of between 1/250th and 1/1000th, depending on lighting conditions and angle, or about 1/4th of what they would be without the filter. The lower shutter speeds allowed considerably more motion blur to occur in wheels without loss of sharpness in the car itself, which is exactly the effect I wanted. There are downsides to these filters, of course, as it makes manual focusing more difficult through a dimmer viewfinder and on partly cloudy days a passing cloud can block enough light to cause the shutter speed to become too low. The darkening of the viewfinder is a particular concern on the Nikon D70 which has a small finder, especially in comparison to my F100. I also found that ND filters are not appropriate for panning shots, as the filter factor will cause a larger aperture to be used in shutter priority mode, thus reducing some of the background blur. Despite the downsides I think they are quite useful and I will be purchasing a few more ND filters of various density factors to have broader control of the shutter speed range.

Thank yo uso much... I really appreciate your help. Do you have any examples up yet?

 

-Norman

I've posted a shot of Bruno Junqueira that demonstrates why I don't think an ND filter is really appropriate for panning shots:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/2619965

 

The shot still works pretty well, but had I removed the ND filter I might've been able to stop down to f22 for the same or lower shutter speed and gotten more motion blur in the background.

 

After this test I'll be purchasing an ND filter for my 500mm lens, which I use mostly for head-on or slight angle shots, and I'll let you know how it works.

I've just posted an image on photo.net that will hopefully illustrate some of the value of a neutral density filter. It's a panning shot from the inside of Turn 5 at Road America as a Porsche locks its front wheels under braking. As the details of the image note, this is 1/160th of a second at f8. At the same aperture and without the ND filter the shutter speed would have been 1/640th of a second and I would've lost the wheel spin evident in the rear wheel. You can see the image at:

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?topic_id=1481&msg_id=009IPw&photo_id=2644947&photo_sel_index=0