Those kite shots are great. I went to one near Rhayader a year or two back, ended up just having to keep taking photos, it was virtually impossible to track any of them.

It's a nice location, I had a day down there earlier in the year but somehow forgot to post any images. I like the second image, the two bridges do look good there. As we travelled along the line I spotted a few places that looked like they might be decent places to take photos from, but haven't had the chance to go back yet.

Yes, envious of your panning technique there, very good motion capture.

I do like that image Peter, as you say, it doesn't do for all of them. I don't generally carry a tripod, and in fact this time as I wasn't in my car I just had the Sigma 18-200 lens on, where I might have got slightly better from the bigger lens. When someone else is driving, I don't want to be the pain that keeps wanting to go back to the car and swap lenses, get the tripod, put the tripod away, and I certainly am too lazy to carry it around with me all day.

Derek, I'd actually been shooting pan shots at 1/100 or 1/160, but increased to 1/200 or 1/250 on advice (perhaps here, perhaps on another forum) and it did help to get the cars sharper. Your point about locking focus is a good one, and maybe that's the issue, though I did think that with the camera set to "continuous" it might be dealing with that for me. Then again, I might just be expecting more from the Kx than it can deliver. I noticed part-way through the day that I wasn't utilising hi-speed continuous shooting mode - it was on, but I was just taking one image rather than a load to pick from. I know what you mean about swivelling at the waist - sometimes I can really tell when I've been at one of these events, though it's cheaper than a gym. Not so much again with these cars though - some of the smaller stuff struggles to get into second gear towards the top of the hill.

I do keep meaning to spend more time at my local circuit to practise panning, but here's another year almost gone and I've been three times, and all of those were on actual events rather than during the week when they have track and test days, and more to the point for practising, free admission. That's one of the reasons I took more head-on shots this time around.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

Thanks both of you.

I did some panning shots - those side-on views are panned - but if I decrease the shutter speed to get more blur in the background I find that the vehicle is more blurred, too. It doesn't help, of course, that several of the vintage cars are relatively slow-moving, so getting motion blur is that much more difficult.

We had a day out at Loton Park last Saturday, for the Vintage Sports Car Club Speed Championship round. It's a very picturesque setting just south of Shrewsbury. Weather wasn't kind, though it wasn't as bad as the forecast suggested it was going to be.

Here's a few photos from the day.

1.


proc_IMGP1750. by Mike Edwards, on Flickr

2.


proc_IMGP1713. by Mike Edwards, on Flickr

3.


proc_IMGP1675. by Mike Edwards, on Flickr

4.


proc_IMGP1624. by Mike Edwards, on Flickr

5.


proc_IMGP1621a. by Mike Edwards, on Flickr

Any comments or critique welcome.

Thanks all.

I like this kind of stuff, and have had a bit of a go at similar stuff in the past. Like RobL, I think 2, 3 and 6 work very well.

Pah! Wash your mouth out! *

Seriously though, that's a Vauxhall Firenza, and it's been converted to have a V8 engine in a similar spec to the South-Africa-only Chevrolet Can-Am Firenza. It gets to a lot of events like this, some overseas such as the Rally Transmeria in Spain, and has been driven in various historic rallies by Jimmy McRae.

If you like the way it looks, you'd love the way it sounds. I could hardly hear the Super Touring Cars race over it.


proc_IMGP1393. by Mike Edwards, on Flickr

(* Big Ford vs. Vauxhall rivalry at the time this was in production in the early half of the 1970s).

Cheers - most of the rally cars were just doing power slide after slide because it's a really slippery surface even before it rains - power slides at 25mph. I didn't have a great position as there were quite a few watching, there's one spot where most of the cars lift a wheel after the first long bend, but I was just behind a little hill and couldn't quite catch it.