Picture Thoughts Please.

Editing is not going to save a bad shot, and those are poor but that's not to say you're not going to get any better. It's taken me almost 3 years of going to about 10 or so motorsport events a year and taking thousands of pictures before I've gotten to what I think is a decent standard.

First of all you want to make sure you are in AI Servo for Auto-focussing, I've not used the 5DIII and I know it's got a hugely complex AF system and I would suggest you take a look at the AF Guidebook as it'll help you - http://goo.gl/fEc1Hx.

It's really important to spend some time tweaking the AF as it makes a difference between getting a good hit rate or a load of duds. Normally I work in Zone AF mode and I will use the custom settings to make sure the camera obtains focus before releasing the shutter for the first shot (I think it's called Focus Priority), 'Responsive' set to +1 for switching between subjects quickly and acceleration/deceleration tracking set to +1. BUT experiment with what works for you.

For panning shots work in TV mode and let the camera work out the aperture needed; start off at 1/320 and work your way down (1/250, 1/125). Set the ISO manually though, 100/200 for good light 400/800 for grey-overcast/rain generally. For head on shots there's no point trying to get any motion blur using a low shutter speed because you'll just end up with blurry image so try and keep to the general rule of 1:1 for focal length/shutter speed (for example 1/320 for 300mm) or higher. There's a few good guides online about panning technique but a good start is to stand parallel to the track with your feet pointing towards to spot where you want to capture the car, pick the car up as it approaches and swing in an arc as the car passes and continue the swing after the car has passed as this will help keep the motion smooth. You'll probably find that the best shots are in the middle of the burst as this is where you were at your must natural position and not all twisted up hence me saying point your feet towards where you want your shot.

If you are shooting head on through a fence, make sure you are in A (aperture priority) set the aperture to the lens's widest (lowest number), zoom in as much as you can and get as close to the fence as (safely!) possible.

IMG_1448 by Bryan Janes, on Flickr

This was taken through a fence and you can just about see a slightly darker area in the top right hand corner but the shot is more than usable.

Panning shots through fences are often a waste of time however and rarely work so don't waste space on your memory card because they'll look not too bad on a 3" LCD but the second you put them up on a monitor they'll look awful.

In terms of editing, I don't find much need to heavily process shots, I just tweak the highlights/shadows and apply a bit of sharpening. I guess firstly you want to understand the histogram in LR as that will point out some of the highlight clipping you've got in one of your shots. I've rambled on enough but this will give you a decent explanation about how to understand a histogram - http://photography.tutsplus.com/tut...gram-in-adobe-photoshop-lightroom--photo-4278.

It'd still be useful to know what lens you took those shots with.
 
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thanks thats really useful.

it was taken on the canon 70-300mm

I have the second pic i took set as a wallpaper on my LG 29" screen and it looks spot on. Disappointed as they clearly aren't as nice as i thought haha
 
Screenshot%202014-08-27%2019.44.08.png


These are my export settings in LR if that's of any use to you.

You should be able to get decent shots from that lens, don't be disheartened, you just need practice.

Here's how I would have processed that shot:

yhTvqHr-3.jpg


It would look a lot better if I had the original RAW to work with. Here's the DNG you can import into LR so you can see the edits I made: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11422169/yhTvqHr.dng
 
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I can't pretend to be an expert, but shooting motorsport requires a lot of effort and typically some decent kit. I've been trying to take photos of Formula 1 for about ten years now and I've certainly learnt a thing or two along the way.

I think the biggest point of all is that trying to take photos as a spectator is not particularly good, especially if you are in a grandstand. The best shots tend to come from when you are at track level, and while I haven't really shot other motorsport, from what I've read, Formula 1 is more or less the toughest form of the sport to really get good shots from that level. That's largely due to fencing, safety, the preference for grandstands and the sheer number of people.

With Silverstone, I've found that Friday is the best day for taking photos, as it has the lowest number of spectators, you can walk around the track and find the spots to shoot through the fence, which otherwise would be camped out by spectators from the second the gates open in the morning on qualifying and race days. Saturday used to be alright, but it's got so much busier over the last 6 years that its not really so good anymore. I've also found that trying to shoot from a grandstand on race day now is largely a waste of time, as I'm just not going to get the level of photos I can get from standing track side.


This is probably the best spot I've found, which is a small stretch between the Club Corner grandstand and the new Pit Straight grandstand.


Lewis Hamilton
by
Taiga Studio
, on Flickr



You have to shoot through the fence, and this gives you an idea of what was obstructing the photo above:


Charles Pic Hits The Barriers
by Taiga Studio, on Flickr



This is another small area of fencing just before Becketts, which is super busy most of the time and the cars are coming in really fast. You can see the fence links are a lot more noticeable though:


Mark Webber
by Taiga Studio, on Flickr


This one was from a grandstand, but obviously the dream angle is to get as low down as possible from the cars.

Lewis Hamilton
by Taiga Studio, on Flickr

For reference, this was the fence I was shooting through in the first shot:
 
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