Indoor karting - what do you suggest?

[paulo_cortez]

Hi,

 

A friend of mine is building a website for an indoor karting club and he wants

to periodically upload photos from the races and competitions that take place there.

 

Therefore, he wants to buy the cheapest available digital SLR kit (body, one

zoom...and flash) that can allow him to shoot "decent" pictures for the website.

 

Shooting conditions and requisites as follows:

 

- artificial lighting

 

- between 5 to 30 meters from the fast moving "subjects"

 

- 10MP (there's always a competitor asking for a print)

 

- image stabilization (?)

 

- fast and accurate focusing

 

- any digital SLR brand will suit

 

What do you suggest?

 

Thanks in advance for your always very helpful answers and a Happy New Year,

 

Paulo

[Matt Laur]

A Nikon D80, with a remote SB-800 strobe. That will put good light onto the section of track where you'll be going for your shots, and by having the ability to put the light off-axis from the camera, the images will be much more dramatic.

 

Consider the kit 18-70mm lens. Image stabilization won't help you at all with strobe-lit action shots. If you want a longer lens for some shots, the 70-300 might be a good companion lens.

[manut]

The Olympus E510 with the 2 kit lens option (14-42 and 40 -150mm) equivalent range 28 to 300 mm will suit your distance range as well as the budget. You can get this in less than $700 now and it has image stabalization in the body.

 

Check it out at amazon or photo.net olympus forum more if you are interested.

[mark u]

The disadvantage with strobe shots is they will make the subject seem static. A flash does come in handy for those end of session shots still in leathers with the trophy (best if the flash can be bounced off white ceiling). However, I'd be looking for a part of the track where some good panned shots without flash will give a real impression of speed. For a typical indoor karting track, that would require f/2 or faster lenses shooting at 1600 or 3200 ISO even to get to ~1/100th (quite a useful speed for panned shots) I would guess.

[zackojones]

I would suggest you offer to do the shooting for your friend, assuming you have any interest in that type of photography. Let him concentrate on running the business and you help me by doing the photography.