Motorcycle racing

Hi folks, i am hoping to go to my first motorcycle race in two weeks at mondello track in ireland, i am hoping for some tips on how to shoot and common errors to avoid, hope ye can help.

Derek

There will be more experienced people offering advice but here is some of mine

1. position yourself to avoid distracting backgrounds if possible except for panning shots.

2. Pre focus on a corner or brow of a hill or similar, switch to mf, adjust your angle to produce the effect you want, ie low angle for bikes approaching over the brow of a hill or to avoid backgrounds including the bright orange clad Marshalls.

3, Try stuff out, ie if you wonder if it will work just give it a go, you may like the results

I don't know the circuit so some of my advice may be useless.

Hope this helps a little, but as I said above there are others around with much more experience

Regards



Stu

Cheers stu. Any and all advice is appreciated. The only thing I have in abundance in clueless enthusiasm

All of what Stuey says and: don't use a tripod, they'll restrict you when you're following the bike. A monopod is quite useful, though.

And if you can find a spot near the finish line a couple of the inevitable wheelies are always good

Thanks again guys, will post some of my efforts it ever gets to race day

Yes don't stand in one or two places trackside and take endless shots of bikes racing around the track. There's nothing more boring than a photoset of similar shots of bikes or cars on a track

Instead wander around and capture the event. Take pics of the crowd, the marshalls, the guy waving the flag, the burger stall, the pits, etc,etc

As with most events the most interesting photography isn't on the track at all.

I would recommend David's tip about panning shots here:

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/city-centre-pro-racing-49646#comm526220

Excellent idea, i probably would have just fixated on the track knowing me.

I tend to use TAv exposure mode for motorsport, setting the shutter speed to at least 1/125th and the aperture around f4 or f8 to get some shots 'in the bag'. Then I play with larger/smaller apertures and slower/faster shutter speeds but still in TAv mode.

Try and get some shots of bikes on corners/hairpins, entering and leaving, where the bike is leaning over.


These are from a BSB pro-test day at my local track in Spain.

This is a shot of Josh Brookes and Tommy Bridewell of the Milwaukee Yamaha team testing at Cartagena this year.





K52_6201.jpg by Peter E Smith (AKA Mannesty), on Flickr

Many thanks, They are super shots Peter, If i get anything half as good i think i will be doing well

Derek

Looking at your list of lenses, you are going to need to be fairly close to the action if the DA* 50-135mm lens is the longest focal length you have.

I typically use a Pentax DA* 60-250mm, Sigma 70-200m, or a Sigma 150-500mm.

Im hoping to buy back the da* 300mm that i sold a while ago before race day.

The DA* 300mm will produce awesome images but as its a prime, it'll be limiting, if you intend to do much motorsport photography a good zoom lens will serve you better in my opinion. Have a look at simonarron's posts on here, he uses a Sigma 100-300mm lens nowadays.

I had the DA* 300mm lens and the 1.7x T/C and sold them both because zooms, good ones, are much more flexible. Maybe consider a DA* 60-250mm instead, same max aperture of f4, superb image quality too. Alternatively the Sigma 100-300m 1:4 is also a superb motorsport lens.

And by pure coincidence, this pops up for sale.

Absolutely nothing to do with me, but do consider it. It's not the fastest focussing lens in the Pentax DA* line up, but neither is the DA* 300mm.