photographers - a little help please
 

Have a couple of questions re settings for taking pics

Today I was taking images of some racing (cars) and it was extremely cloudy and the pics came out like shit for the most part.

I will post a couple of the images in a minute.

I'm using a Canon 30D with 70-300 IS lens and i'm a complete novice.

Could anyone give me a couple of tips as to what basic settings to use for a cloudy day, subject is ~100 metres away and moving at ~100k's.

Any help would be much appreciated. :thumbsup

fast shutter
low ISO
f8

Pics

they are all super dark - it was soooo dark today from the storm it almost looked like dusk :(

http://www.sr510.com/gfy/drift/01.jpg

http://www.sr510.com/gfy/drift/02.jpg

http://www.sr510.com/gfy/drift/03.jpg

http://www.sr510.com/gfy/drift/04.jpg

fast shutter was set

and umm ISO 400 from memory...i'llhave to check the cam

looks like you wanne be at about 600

im far from a pro but i been around

thanks - i'll keep that in mind next time i'm out and about

Here you go....

Kodak Tip for photographing race cars....

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/consumer/...0.1.4.13&lc=en

All the photos are underexposed. You should e able to make them a lot better in PS.

Do a goggle on "camera EV" and read that section in your manual.

Have fun!

PS will do wonders

Those photos actually look pretty good for the settings. I have the 20D, and I am still pikcing up the manual to learn things. Just google the things you want to learn about, and you can find it.

the pics are not bad, just probably need to tweak them a little in photoshop... maybe also try shooting at lower f-stop so the background comes out blurred and cars stand out more...

Given the lighting you were dealing with, those are pretty good! I have shot for NASCAR for several years in the past, when I lived in Atlanta, and it'd ether be full on sun - or crappy dark ovrcast - as you seem to have had.

At the time, shooting film, FUJI had come out with an 800 ISO film, and that worked wonders! The car shots below were shot under those conditions. The pic of me was from a different year there, but I wanted to show you where I shot them from - it is highly unusual, and NASCAR had made "special consideration" for me to do so, even cutting out part of the catch fence for me to shoot through. :-)

Fitz

http://www.fitzmulti.com/ams01.jpg
http://www.fitzmulti.com/ams537.jpg
http://www.fitzmulti.com/bfwall3.jpg

adjust your exposure index to give half a stop more.

shoot raw if possible so you can batch adjust WB.

generally cloudy conditions will make pix look too blue, make sure you have a haze filter on lens and probably you will need to tweak these images to something like 5300-5400K to give more warmth.

You didn't tell us what lens you are using, as far as f-stop goes. The best thing you can do for shooting fast moving objects is to get a fast lens. What you need is a 300mm f2.0 or 400mm f2.0 lens. I don't remember who said to shoot at f8, but that is just wrong for something like sports shooting, especially something moving as fast as a race car.

Going from f8 to f2 is more than three stops faster with regard to light, so the images would be much brighter. If you didn't need that much you should still go full open because shooting something moving this fast requires as fast a shutter speed possible. Not just for the movement of the car, but the movement introduced into a 300mm lens.

Shooting in raw can help a little, but don't use that as an excuse to not learn how to shoot. Go down to a camera shop and buy yourself a good light meter that has a spot meter. I use a sekonic 558R. A good light meter is indespensible in photography. chimping to the LCD is not a substitute for a good meter.

my expert photographer said that your photos are alright. And you can do nothing else.

I used my Canon 20D with the 70-200 mm F 2.8 to shoot the Rolex, IROC and Pepsi 400 at Daytona a few weeks ago. I shot during the day in sunny and cloudy conditions. I shot during sunset and I shot late into the night using the track's lights. The whole time I used only two settings. I put it on sport mode during the day and aperture priority ( 2.8 ) ISO 1600 at night. With a little post production tweaking in PS the pictures came out really well.

Of course none of this means anything unless I back it up with some samples so I guess I better get working on a higher post count to post some pics

the best book on your camera :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157...e=UTF8&s=books

I'm no expert, but those pics look pretty darn good.