Any advice to help me improve?

Morbius

Morbius

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Name
Rob
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Hi everyone! I've done a couple of BSB rounds now, having not shot motorsport for a while. Along the way I've learnt a few things, however I'm far from perfect and I would like to improve.

Here are sets from the two events I've put on flickr, if you'd like to see where I'm at now.
BSB Snetterton 2013 (7/7/13)
BSB Brands Hatch July 2013 (21/7/13)

Rather stupidly, I've been shooting with VR on. I'm concerned this might have been negatively impacting my hit rate, as well as draining my batteries more quickly. It makes sense that with a pan you don't want something trying to fight the motion of the camera, but I didn't think it through at the time. :bonk:

How much cropping does everyone do? I'm slightly concerned that by only having 6MP, it is reducing the potential for cropping.

As the thread title says, I welcome any advice. :)
 
Ok, VR... as I said to someone else, switch it off or if you think you must use it, only take one shot at a time - the time for VR spin up to effective speed is longer than is expected by most. When the shutter is released the whole process starts again and so if you fire a burst, its almost certainly gonna screw up.

Just switch it off and learn to live without the crutch - perfectly possible. Hand hold up to 300mm and monopod for the bigger, heavier, longer stuff.

Cropping? Yes, pretty much everyone does it to some degree - if only to tidy and perfect a final image a small bit. Radical heavy crops won't work on 6mp and give good clean images. If you have a D800 or a 1DX you can cleanly achieve a fair bit.

Your D40 will probably be holding you back in more serious ways however - the main thing (with all digital cameras!) is shutter lag. This is the real killer, especially with motorsport.

If you can, consider maybe a second hand D300 or D300S... they are quite long in the tooth but on the other hand, still currently state of the art for a Nikon DX body. Their age makes them an excellent second hand purchase!

On the images you have so far, two things:

1) Try to move around and get some more variety - assuming you want to be a photographer and not just a spectator with a camera (which is fine, but decide for yourself)

2) Have a think about less central compositions - although that will be hard with your D40 as the outer focus points are not going to be fast or accurate (something the D300 rocks with!)

Hope this helps!
 
desantnik said:
Ok, VR... as I said to someone else, switch it off or if you think you must use it, only take one shot at a time - the time for VR spin up to effective speed is longer than is expected by most. When the shutter is released the whole process starts again and so if you fire a burst, its almost certainly gonna screw up.
Click to expand...
Next time I think I'm going to switch it off and see how I go.

desantnik said:
Your D40 will probably be holding you back in more serious ways however - the main thing (with all digital cameras!) is shutter lag. This is the real killer, especially with motorsport.
Click to expand...
I'm probably going to buy a new camera in the not-so-distant future.

desantnik said:
2) Have a think about less central compositions - although that will be hard with your D40 as the outer focus points are not going to be fast or accurate (something the D300 rocks with!)
Click to expand...
With the D40 I have three focus points - left, centre and right. It's a bit difficult...

Many thanks for your advice! It's much appreciated. As to your question, I'd like to be a proper photographer one day if possible. I'm happy doing what I do now, so if I'm not talented enough then I wouldn't be distraught. I'd like to have moved around a bit more, but quite often I was having to find gaps in the line of spectators at the fence. I think I'll have to go to a less high-profile meeting and experiment.
 
desantnik said:
If you can, consider maybe a second hand D300 or D300S... they are quite long in the tooth but on the other hand, still currently state of the art for a Nikon DX body. Their age makes them an excellent second hand purchase!
Click to expand...

If I could afford a D7100, do you think that would that be worth going for?
 
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