Mac K Photography *Racing and Panning Shots*

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^^^ I've just gotten into photography for a couple of months now, but I use Lightroom 3.5 for windows and it works great with RAW files. You can preview RAW files in Lightroom quite easily before you import them as well... I began shooting in jpeg in the beginning, but quickly moved on to RAW once I saw the advantages of using it. It takes up more room and requires a tad more effort, but the end results are quite impressive... :)
 
Love that one, even left you a comment on Flickr a while back. Sweet shot. 👍
 
I've been meaning to comment here for quite some time and have only just gotten round to doing it...

Your panning is pretty much spot on, the car is nice and sharp and they look great. Particularly liking the most recent shot as it's very nicely composed and has some great vibrant colours.

I'm now going to give some C&C if you don't mind. My first comment would be that variation is the spice of life, it appears you've gone to the effort to do various different compositions and what looks to be different sections of track but from a viewers perspective they all look relatively similar. Most the shots seem to be side-on panning shots, which whilst they are great, I'd like to see some more action. Perhaps try to experiment with some slower shutter speeds for the pans and then do some action shots of the cars racing around the corners with the rest of the pack. Also try getting some front end shots of the cars or front 3/4 shots.

At the moment it's also quite difficult to get a sense of location, a lot of the shots seem to have the same 'green, tarmac, car, grass, armco, fence' pattern which makes the shots look the same - even if they aren't. Perhaps try to either isolate the car from it's surroundings completely (full frame style) or show more of the background but with a higher shutter speed.

I don't mean any of this in a particularly negative light, but I just thought I'd give some constructive feedback which might actually help!

On the RAW v.s. JPEG matter, I used to shoot all my motorsport events in RAW (I was using the 350D at this point) and I was fine with doing so it was a good way to make sure that if I slightly messed up the white balance then I could fix it relatively easy in Photoshop. However, when I started to become media more often I ended up ditching RAW, not because I wanted to particularly (I still prefer that working method) but because it's simply too time consuming. In the couple of jobs I've had I've needed to have the pictures done within an hour or so of the race finishing which RAW doesn't lend itself too.

If your not in a rush to get the images out and online as quickly as possible and you have the HDD space I'd probably shoot RAW. It gives you a little bit more flexibility and lets you learn a lot about what kind of white balances suit each situation. But if your in a desperate rush to get your images processed as quickly and efficiently as possible I'd say stick to JPEG.

But that's just my opinion.
 
Speedster502
I've been meaning to comment here for quite some time and have only just gotten round to doing it...

Your panning is pretty much spot on, the car is nice and sharp and they look great. Particularly liking the most recent shot as it's very nicely composed and has some great vibrant colours.

I'm now going to give some C&C if you don't mind. My first comment would be that variation is the spice of life, it appears you've gone to the effort to do various different compositions and what looks to be different sections of track but from a viewers perspective they all look relatively similar. Most the shots seem to be side-on panning shots, which whilst they are great, I'd like to see some more action. Perhaps try to experiment with some slower shutter speeds for the pans and then do some action shots of the cars racing around the corners with the rest of the pack. Also try getting some front end shots of the cars or front 3/4 shots.

At the moment it's also quite difficult to get a sense of location, a lot of the shots seem to have the same 'green, tarmac, car, grass, armco, fence' pattern which makes the shots look the same - even if they aren't. Perhaps try to either isolate the car from it's surroundings completely (full frame style) or show more of the background but with a higher shutter speed.

I don't mean any of this in a particularly negative light, but I just thought I'd give some constructive feedback which might actually help!

On the RAW v.s. JPEG matter, I used to shoot all my motorsport events in RAW (I was using the 350D at this point) and I was fine with doing so it was a good way to make sure that if I slightly messed up the white balance then I could fix it relatively easy in Photoshop. However, when I started to become media more often I ended up ditching RAW, not because I wanted to particularly (I still prefer that working method) but because it's simply too time consuming. In the couple of jobs I've had I've needed to have the pictures done within an hour or so of the race finishing which RAW doesn't lend itself too.

If your not in a rush to get the images out and online as quickly as possible and you have the HDD space I'd probably shoot RAW. It gives you a little bit more flexibility and lets you learn a lot about what kind of white balances suit each situation. But if your in a desperate rush to get your images processed as quickly and efficiently as possible I'd say stick to JPEG.

But that's just my opinion.

Thanks. I just started getting good at panning over the summer, so I didn't really experiment with different locations, but I plan to at my next racing event in a few months. For the record Watkins Glen is hard to shoot at, the Armco is way to high in most places.. But all the other tracks I plan on visiting next season are better to shoot at and i'll gladly take your advice there, even though I was kind of already planning on it. Thanks again, I appreciated your comments and criticism.
 
adding to what Speedster said about all pictures looking the same, I'd also keep an eye on background cluttering. The 240z pic, for example, shows a lot of background but nothing distractig. The same can't be said with the Boss 302 and the last Vette pic, what with the cars parked in the background and the random SUV. In those cases, I'd say it's way better to isolate the car as much as possible. The Boss 302 pic would be boss (dah) if it only showed the car and Armco and some of the grass above it, for instance, isntead of the parking lot.
 
Basically, he's saying crop the picture. You can't reliably shoot close enough to fill the frame with the subject, you'll miss and cut off the subject, and maybe your lens doesn't reach that far anyway. So shoot about the way you are, and crop the picture later to cut out the extraneous busy useless stuff.
 
I don't understand why you continue to excessively sharpen your images or shoot at F/8 and ISO 200 when you could easily go to 5.6 and 100, which would even push out the background a bit more.

Panning is still impressive
 
I don't understand why you continue to excessively sharpen your images or shoot at F/8 and ISO 200 when you could easily go to 5.6 and 100, which would even push out the background a bit more.

Panning is still impressive

These are older shots from the archives, almost didn't recognize you with that new avatar though, you're very hard to please:P
 
These are older shots from the archives, almost didn't recognize you with that new avatar though, you're very hard to please:P

I'm like that teacher that is always nagging you about the details :dopey:

Makes more sense from the archives. I generally don't process till I am ready to post stuff, so even old shots get new processing when I go to post them. Kind of neat to compare how changes in post can change the feel of a set that was taken all at the same time.
 
I'm like that teacher that is always nagging you about the details :dopey:

Makes more sense from the archives. I generally don't process till I am ready to post stuff, so even old shots get new processing when I go to post them. Kind of neat to compare how changes in post can change the feel of a set that was taken all at the same time.

Thanks teach:P. I took your advice and stopped using the overly excessive sharpening in lightroom and went back to doing the "unsharp mask" in Photoshop, and honestly I finally see what you were talking about, I like the look of these photos more compared to the others(at least in the sharpening aspect of them) I don't know if they're perfect yet, but I'm happy with them. But seriously, I want to get out and shoot, but snow prevents races from happening:P


Stuttgart by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Revenge of The Clone by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Dreams of Speed by Mac K Photography, on Flickr
 
More Archives... Been awhile since an update. Can't wait to get shooting again.


17 Again by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Nostalgic Brumos by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Pit Stop by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Baby Blue by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Red Rocket by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Mello Yellow by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Let's do 59 by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Silver Bullet by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Overtake by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Goat GT by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Cool Down by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Cheese Grader by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Pretty in Pink by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Detail by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Screamin' Demon by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Wings Spread by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


In-N-Out by Mac K Photography, on Flickr


Cat Woman by Mac K Photography, on Flickr
 
^ Lovely shots! Really like the first and second one! 👍
 
Panning and cars shots are still spot on as usual :P I'm really liking the waterfall shot though. Very peaceful and serene feeling to it.
 
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