Prescott: La Vie en Bleu

What sort of shutter speeds do you guys use to get the motion blur effect when the cars go past?

I managed to get one right when we went Karting on Saturday, but I wasn't sure what shutter speed I was supposed to be using and I can't remember what I used when it came out well.
 
^^^
I'm not an expert as it was only my first time at the weekend as well, but I think it depends on what lens your using, and if it has IS or VR etc.

I was mostly between 1/100 and 1/60 @ 35mm F16, and I could only go to 1/60 later in the day, else all my pictures would be too over exposed (as D700 is limited to ISO200 and I didn't have an ND filter).
At those settings my pictures were still a good stop over exposed, but I knew that the D700 is particularly good at recovering highlight detail, so I continued at those settings all the way through except when I was shooting at F1.4...
 
An Exception said:
^^^
Just had a look through mate, and tbh you have some very good shot's indeed.
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Thanks. I've only been doing photography for a year so I'm still learning. I think I had about a 1 in 10 hit rate for decent pictures so I was quite pleased with that.
You have a good eye for the non-track stuff though. You're very good at spotting what the people are doing.

What sort of shutter speeds do you guys use to get the motion blur effect when the cars go past?
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I'm not as good as Mr Exception there, but I was doing 1/100, 125 or 160 on shutter priority and auto ISO, probably about F8 (I'm not good enough to set it all manually yet). I tried a few at 1/80th but my panning skills weren't good enough. It also makes a difference how far away the car is. At Prescott you can get within a few feet of the cars at good speed but I found that really tricky to get right (especially on the stretch up to the first left hander) so I switched from my 18-55mm to 70-300mm and found I got a much better hit rate for the cars slightly further away as you have a bit more time to track it.

Lot of lens envy going on too. It's a good job I'm not rich! Some guys with huuuuuge lenses. Love to see what pics they get from those. At one point I was standing next to a guy with a nikon lens that must have been all of 2ft long! of course he may be 'all the gear no idea' :D
 
Kevin Clark said:
Lot of lens envy going on too. It's a good job I'm not rich! Some guys with huuuuuge lenses. Love to see what pics they get from those. At one point I was standing next to a guy with a nikon lens that must have been all of 2ft long! of course he may be 'all the gear no idea' :D
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Also it's double edged sword taking that kind of gear as it's allot to carry around, and once you get setup in a spot, I doubt you want to move on.
I only had my 35 & 85 on me, but like you said, you can get pretty close to the cars so I could get by with just those two lenses. There were times when I would have liked more reach, but it wasn't that often.
At the other end of the scale, I did see one guy with a very light setup though, he was using a compact with 16x zoom, attached to a monopod...
 
I ended up getting a 2nd hand 70-200mm f/2.8 VR; I was playing with the 'normal' mode that takes out the up and down motion but not panning. That seemed to work but I wasn't sure how slow a shutter speed I needed to go down to in order to get the effect. I'll have to check the EXIF wotsits on the original to see what I ended up with.
 
Yeovilton Airday is on the Saturday,although bit of a drag for one day, and all weekend is a military vehicle show near Evesham.
Not cars, but I like most things with wheels or engines!
 
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