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Rally photographing at night time

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Rally photographing at night time

  • PaddyF
    Participant

    Hi

    I will be attending some of the night stages of the Cork 20 on saturday night. Just looking for some general advice, shooting with a 500D, 55-250 lens and Polarising filter. Just looking for advice on shooting, I presume I will have to be behind the cars because of their lights, a fast shutter speed…. I like to freeze the shot, so I guess 1/1250 or something very high? Low ISO? What about aperture? Thanks for any help or advice in this area, I’m still learning and want to get the best results I can.

    Regards,
    Patrick.

    Ballyman
    Participant

    Howya Patrick

    Let me just say first off that I don’t know anything about motorsport.

    However what I would say is I would lose the polariser. This is going to reduce your expsoure by a stop and a half and if you want to freeze action at night then this has to go. To be honest, I seriously doubt you will be able to get anywhere near 1/1250 regardless of what lens/camera you have unless there are spotlights on the cars.

    I think the best you can hope for with the setup you have is to either pan with the cars or try and base yourself at a sharp bend or other placed where the cars won’t be travelling at high speed and you might be able to freeze them there but unless there is lots of light shining on the car then this is impossible I would say.

    Like i said, i know nothing about motorsport so I could be wrong on all this!!

    PaddyF
    Participant

    Ballyman wrote:

    Howya Patrick

    Let me just say first off that I don’t know anything about motorsport.

    However what I would say is I would lose the polariser. This is going to reduce your expsoure by a stop and a half and if you want to freeze action at night then this has to go. To be honest, I seriously doubt you will be able to get anywhere near 1/1250 regardless of what lens/camera you have unless there are spotlights on the cars.

    I think the best you can hope for with the setup you have is to either pan with the cars or try and base yourself at a sharp bend or other placed where the cars won’t be travelling at high speed and you might be able to freeze them there but unless there is lots of light shining on the car then this is impossible I would say.

    Like i said, i know nothing about motorsport so I could be wrong on all this!!

    Thanks that still some helpful advice. I was using the polariser to reduce the glare from windscreens so if I actually thought about it I’d know I didn’t need it anyway. I will lose the polariser for the night and maybe try it with a hood to reduce stray light if that would be any advantage. Thanks for the advice, I was thinking it would be hard enough to position myself alright! I will just have to experiment with shutter speeds. Thanks for your advice

    shutterbug
    Participant

    At night you will probably have to increase your ISO to achieve a faster
    shutter speed, ideally night time photography the “static” kind you would
    keep the ISO low to avoid noise, but you will as I said probably have to
    up it considerably to get a half decent shutter speed. Wide aperature to
    let in maximum light available so a 1.8 or 2.8 if possible, and definitely no
    polariser as this will cut down on the light.

    Should be good crack though and look forward to seeing what you get! Good
    luck.

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