Locations

• American Le Mans, vintage, and touring cars - Lime Rock Park, CT
• US Formula 1 Grand Prix - Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indianapolis, IN (950 miles)
• Canadian Formula 1 Grand Prix - Ile Notre-Dame, Montreal

Motor Racing Tips

You will principally be shooting sports/action, although there are additional opportunities during pit walkabouts for close-ups of cars, team personnel, and drivers and on race day for crowd shots.

Lenses

Various lenses will be required depending on distance from the action - usually the longer the better. Typically 200mm + 1.4 converter is the shortest you can use. More frequently for me 400mm prime (longest I have which with 1.4 converter giving 560mm). Digital camera gives me a further multiplication factor of 1.3.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the critical factor for motor racing shots. Faster shutter speeds freeze the action, but result in a larger aperture and hence shallower depth of field (especially with the longer focal length lenses you have to use). So if shooting digital make use of the ISO setting on your camera. I will typically use a setting of 400 ISO (depending on the ambient light) so that the faster shots 1/500-1/800sec gives a decent depth of field. If shooting film, use ISO 400 film.

I will normally take a few shots at higher shutter speeds to be on the safe side. This gives you something in the bank if your panning skills desert you for the rest of the day. You can always try and apply motion blur in Photoshop if you that way inclined.

Slower speed shots give a better impression of the speed of the vehicle - as can be seen in a panned shot. Panning technique has the photographer spinning on an axis with the camera pointing to the same point on the subject as it passes him/her. The shot is taken with the subject - hopefully - remaining in focus and the background and other fast moving parts (such as spinning wheels) are left blurred to show speed. Shoot these shots at about 1/125sec and practice, practice, practice.

Support

A lot of people use a tripod when shooting - I use a monopod when not panning. If your lens has image stabilization, use it. They may also have different stabilization modes, one of which is most likely a panning mode - use that.

Focus

Set your auto focus to AI Servo (Canon speak) rather than single shot so that the focus point continually tracks the subject with the shutter half depressed and when the shutter is fired you hopefully have a decent shot. Be aware that some lenses when used with tele-converters can lose the ability to auto focus - depends on quality of lens and camera. Also, I set the auto-focus to use only the main center focus point which makes it more straightforward when panning to keep that focus point on the area of interest.

Shoot Bursts

Set the drive speed of your camera or its motor drive to its highest setting. The ability to shoot at 8 frames per second that some camera give, is very useful for capturing action sequences - what you might miss in the first frame you may get in a later one. The amount you can shoot in a single burst will depend on what quality of image you are generating and how much memory your camera has in its buffer. Decent sports journalist cameras will allow 5 seconds worth of shooting at 8 frames per second at high quality JPEG.

Shoot JPEG

I normally shoot JPEG because of the number of shots produced but also because the post-processing is more of a pain when shooting RAW - sometimes you wish you had shot RAW to give you more latitude in post-processing.

Point and Shoot

Non-DSLR digital cameras will generally struggle due to shutter lag. You will press the button when you think the picture should be taken, but the delay between the press and the capture can be significant, resulting in a failure to shoot quite what you expected.

Film

Take a lot of camera memory/film, or a device onto which you can copy your flash memory so that you can re-use it. I use 5 x 1GB compact flash cards with an Epson p-2000 external hard drive, which allows me to save/empty the cards as I go and to view the results. Sometimes I run out of cards - that is always the time that the excitement happens right in front of you. I have taken about 8GB of shots in a day - after that my camera and lens start getting altogether too heavy and the local brew pub beckons...

End of Day Review

If staying away, I also take a laptop computer so the shots can be backed up and viewed on a larger screen to check for mistakes/focus issues, etc. There is nothing worse than taking 3 days worth of shots only to find a few specks of dust on your sensor that you could have removed after the first day. Also, you may have made a blunder - disabled auto-focus on a lens, forgotten to change the ISO, or exposure compensation or worse. If you check early enough you can correct the next day if necessary.

Limited Track Time

Use the support races as practice sessions to locate the good spots and to get your shooting technique right for the main event. As an exercise once I even shot a couple of hundred images of my daughter circling me on her bike to practice panning.

Fill the frame with the subject - crop your images if necessary. Keep some space between the nose of the car and the edge of the photo (or crop) to give it some room.

Shooting Position

This can be problematic at Formula 1 venues due to the almost unbroken fencing between spectators and the track. Options are: to obtain press credentials, which is next to impossible, or to be creative and locate the good spots - you will be surrounded by like-minded photographers at all the good spots.

Where to shoot from:

• Grass banks around the track (Indianapolis) offer good elevated vantage points which are further away and do not have fences (or you can see over the top of the fence) - long lens required.
• Shoot close to the fence using a shallow depth of field which can minimize the impact of the fence on the final shot
• Locate the special photographer slits in the fencing these are generally crowded on race day so get there early. Also, the pros stroll up 5 minutes before the race and can block your shot. Usually they do not stay long in one location.
• Shoot from the stands looking down on the track - panned or fixed so that the car is blurred passing through.
• Make a mental note of how fast the cars are going at certain points on the track. If they are traveling past you at 200 mph they will be much tougher to pan than if they are doing 60 mph. Outside of hairpin bends is a good spot to take shots.
• Locate any inclines - at the top of some inclines cars will actually lift off the ground. A good spot is just before the chicane at Lime Rock Park.
• Look for turns at the end of a straight where there is always fun.
• Look for any points on the track where certain cars burn off excess fuel and flame - make a note of who and where and be ready when that car comes back round to the same location. Helps here if you shoot in controlled bursts.
• Lime Rock Park is a great location for sports photography: the end of start finish straight where the surface is bumpy is great for wheel spins and smoke; the chicane on the back of the course is good for head-on shots (although it only seems to be used for the bigger Le Mans series cars); over the fence down onto the track at the back of the course is good for panning against the plants (giving a good sense of speed).
• Most of all you should move around. Go everywhere you can and take a look at all vantage points. Decent locations are sometimes difficult to find, but with a good long lens selection you can sometimes get shots at unlikely spots. Be prepared to do a lot of walking.

Other Favorite Places

• Kids Soccer - sports/action, expressions
• North Bridge, Concord, MA - seasonal changes, rebuilt bridge and tree clearing now complete
• Bath, UK and surrounding area - Stonehenge, architecture, history