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Time Attack Round One Photos
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Just a small selection from the first round of the 2008 Time Attack series.
I’m no expert by any means but it looks like the DOF was very shallow. The focus IMO should be on the windscreen and driver but they’re OOF. Blurred too. Shutter speed looks like it needed to be higher.
F4 is enough to grab a whole car from front to back in focus, this was shot at f6.3. It’s a phenomenon known as Turning Focal Plane, where when the shutter speed is slow, you can’t capture the entire car in sharpness unless it is perfectly parallel to you. I’ve always treated the headlights of a car akin to the eyes of a person, if the headlights aren’t sharp it gets dumped. I hate shots where there is no speed in them, looks like the car is parked up on the track. Seems to be a trait of nearly every ‘motoring’ photographer in this country…
I’m gonna jump in here with my 2 cents – I agree with aiden in that for tintops, the windscreen/driver (if you can see them) needs to be in focus (that’s what I’ve always been taught to do, so that works for me), IMO it just looks better. But yes, Paddy the shot is spot on re: shutter speed, gotta have movement.
Here’s one I took years ago…don’t judge the image, I was a youngster then learning the ropes!! But the effect is there, windscreen sharp. My take on the technique! (Sorry for the lowres pic, I dont have any high res of my early stuff).
I’m an awful lad for exaggerating features, especially speed. I can shoot normally but I will put my hand up and say, I get awful carried away with low shutter pans, I’m currently down to a consistent 1/20th of a second …
Thats sharp front to back and still has motion to it but I find it fairly boring. Just a case of different strokes for different folks ? With the drifting stuff, I do try and get the driver sharp in the car aswell, then from B-Pillar and backwards it game on !
paddymcgrath wrote:
F4 is enough to grab a whole car from front to back in focus, this was shot at f6.3. It’s a phenomenon known as Turning Focal Plane, where when the shutter speed is slow, you can’t capture the entire car in sharpness unless it is perfectly parallel to you. I’ve always treated the headlights of a car akin to the eyes of a person, if the headlights aren’t sharp it gets dumped. I hate shots where there is no speed in them, looks like the car is parked up on the track. Seems to be a trait of nearly every ‘motoring’ photographer in this country…
Not so sure about your depth of field calculations,
unless you’re printing them very small-How far away is that car on a 300mm?
Never heard of the phenomenon of ‘Turning Focal Plane’ either-
maybe you could tell us more about that?
Surely the focal plane turns every time you pan?
Or am I just being stupid again?In this case,
I’d say the driver is more important than the headlights, simply because his face is visible-
though he could have chosen a more flattering helmet-He certainly doesn’t seem very sharp though-
You don’t seem to rate anyone else in your field in this country-
I’m quite glad I gave up shooting cars a long time ago now-j
Paddy…
I seen your previous post about 7-10 days ago and was quite impressed with the shots. If you recall I left some comments.
I saw this one earlier today and “hand on my heart” thought to myself:
“God, that’s a poor shot considering this guy’s last batch of shots. The Depth of Field looks way too low and the focus looks off”
Admittedly… I know SFA about what these shots are supposed to look like from a professional standpoint. I am only gauging based on what I think looks right from the Average Joe standpoint.
I wouldn’t be mad on this shot at all and would my gut instinct would be to agree with what the lads have already said about the windscreen/driver.
John
jb7
A great thread on this here – http://www.thephotographyforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=207&st=0&start=0
Just a shame the images are dead in the thread, still worth a read tho.If the driver was sharp in this image, the headlights would be OoF. No amount of aperture adjusting would stop this, the only way to reduce this effect is to push the shutter speed up, which IMO, gives worse results. Example …
f/8, 1/60th – Sharp(ish) driver but either end of the car is OoF. You can’t argue that F8 is more than enough for the length of a car. At 300mm I’m a fair distance back from the cars, I’m not into mathematics, I just know from experience that F4 is the magic number for full length car sharpness at the distances I’m usually back from a car.I think I’ll have a go at reiterating (spl?) what Martin was saying in that thread.
And no, I don’t rate that many motoring photographers in this country. Most sit in a ditch with €10k’s worth of gear shooting wide open and spraying and praying that shots will come out. Thats snapping, not photographing. A 10 year old could do that. Rally photographers are notoriously ignorant, they believe themselves to be on a pedestal above everyone because they have the latest and greatest gear and won’t take a second to rub that in your face. Not all of them mind you, some are top blokes with equally good skills but they are heavily out numbered by these other planks.
Thats not to say they’re aren’t some seriously decent motoring photog’s in this country. In no particular order, Guy’s like Daniel O’Shea (ontherack.net), Marcin Lewandowski (photodrive.eu), Graham Curry (ni-motorsport.co.uk) and This guy from Carrick would wipe the floor with some of these so called ‘Pro’s’. The main difference is that we’re all interested in advancing the level of motoring photography here, whilst the rest are just interested in making money. There are even more guys starting out who have hilarious potential.
If you look to the US or even the UK, its clear as day that we are miles behind in terms of skill, execution and concepts than our neighbours are. But small groups of photographers here who are in it for love, not money wont be long about catching up with the rest of the world.
nfl-fan
Mate if you don’t like it, your perfectly allowed to express that ! I always take C&C onboard, I rather posts saying why people don’t like it than those that do like it.
I still like it and I completely know why you guys don’t. The only reason I’m trying to explain this TFP malarkey is to explain that it’s impossible to get that shot with the lights and driver sharp without sacrificing a lot of motion in the shot. Think I went for the lesser of two evils ?
I’ve never heard of ‘Turning Focal Plane’ before, ever…but I do know that when you use slow shutter speeds, like Paddy has, that’s the effect you get, and it is much better than the ‘parked’ car effect of shooting at 1/250 or 1/500. Actually that pic of car number 9 above, is fine IMO, better than your original shot, but then thats my preference because the way I was taught…technically that is, I dont like the shot at all as it’s quite boring, but 80-90% of my own motorsport & F1 stuff was boring, but that’s life when shooting for clients who request certain types of images showing their paying sponsors.
I’m not going to jump onto the wagon of rating specific motorsport photographers here, only to say that from working within the industry for years in the Uk…the best motosport photographer in this country lives in Belfast & doesn’t do many races anymore, and the UK & Japan IMO has the best motorsport photographers in the world. But hey, as long as you like what you do then have fun doing it. My final few months doing F1 was a pain in the butt, as I lost the enjoyment & love for it….and you need dedication to become good at what you want to do….
Thanks for the link-
it looks like somebody just made it up,
as I suspected, quite possibly in a cafe in Amsterdam…I’d love to see what he’d make of this one-
though don’t show him,
it might fry his brain completely-jb7
If you have nothing helpful to say …Mark
I discovered that with the Time Attack at the weekend, it awful boring to shoot, you might get lucky with the odd locked up wheel but never more than that. I think I’ll stick to the drifting !
Out of interest, how did you get started in F1 ?
paddymcgrath wrote:
jb7
A great thread on this here – http://www.thephotographyforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=207&st=0&start=0
Its not a great thread- and it isn’t a phenomenon called ‘turning focal plane’,
its somebody on the internet using a lot of words to describe motion blur.Its not very helpful to parrot spurious information,
somebody might believe it-
Hopefully I’ve helped save them the embarrassment of repeating it-And I should have mentioned,
that picture in my last post, by Jacques Henri Lartigue-j
Its not my problem-
but there are some clues-It could be motion blur, (subject, camera, or both) insufficient depth of field, or a combination of all-
For example,
they mention that the effect doesn’t happen when photographing a side elevation-
Don’t you think that a possible reason might be that the side of the car occupies the plane of sharp focus?
Its possible…You never addressed my earlier point that f/4 is not enough to achieve acceptable sharpness from front to rear of a car measuring about 4.5m long,
filling the frame of a 1.5 crop sensor camera using a 300mm lens-
but that’s easy enough to test, using a stationary car and a tripod-I could do the calculations, if I could be bothered, and if you told me the distance from camera to car,
but I’m not about to get involved in a debate about numbers.Interestingly, somebody suggested that a ‘Tilt and pan lens’ (sic)
might be a solution to the problem-
though the camera movement that would correct it is called ‘swing’Though they correctly identified the difficulties of controlling this effect on a moving vehicle-
If you’re interested in camera movements, then I could explain them,
but they really don’t apply to fixed lens cameras-
or sports photography- usually-j
Your one of these people who takes a while to get used to ? :D
It’s definitely not insufficient depth of field. I can link up a shot at f/16 (from what I remember) but with a 1/30th shutter, only the bumper and bottom of the headlights are sharp. With drift cars, I always reckoned it was because the back of the car was swaying more than the front as the driver tried to increase his drift angle. AFAIK, It is impossible to get a fully front to back sharp 3/4 facing pan of a car using a slowish shutter. The effect is much less exageratted when the car is cornering around you, if that makes sense ? Would make for an interesting experiment to see at what shutter speeds does this start kicking in at.
Some people have suggested that if you zoom out with the pan, it eradicates this effect, although its hard to pull back on a 300mm prime …
I did respond to that F/4 at 300mm part, I’m just speaking from experience but It’s always been a magic number for me for getting a full car sharp at relative distance. For statics, I usually find its around f/8 ? Like you, I’m not into numbers or distances, I get confused easily !
I don’t think its camera movement either, that would surely affect the entire image. Subject movement is more debatable but I’ve seen it happen at a variety of different events, using different tracks, surfaces, cars and setups to put it down as a coincidence.
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