'machine gunners' crack me up

David Stallard

David Stallard

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I wont point the finger as I know the guy in question is a 'fixture' at Brands Hatch BUT - I was there today testing a few settings on my new mk4 and this guy (also had a 1d mk4) was really going for it as usual on every shot.

I know the mk4 has 10fps but do you really need to shoot everything at hi speed? If we were at a fast / tricky part of the circuit then maybe but we were at one of the tyre chicanes where the cars were doing 20mph at the most, I managed to get all the shots I wanted with a single shot so why the need to take 30+ burst shots - his choice of course and I must remember to ear plugs next time as it really does 'grate' a little after a while.

(going to get flamed for this) - is just a lack of skill stopping him focusing / tracking and then shooting, or is just showing off?

Off to hide from the barrage now

.DAVID.
 
:I had a similar thing at Silverstone last year. I can't remeber if is was MotoGP or WSBK but there was a lady stood by me and she was rattling them off like there was no tommorow and yes I do agree with you it does grate after a while.
It did make me wonder how many shots she took in a weeknd? I know I wouldn't want to sort through them all, but I suppose if it's your thing:shrug:
The bonus side to it was at least it encouraged me to move on and try a different spot:D
 
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there was an episode in one movie where a guy shoots his family by the fountain like that. it obviously was a comedy :D
 
It's probably because your so much better than he is.

I can't belive other people think they know how to use a camera, and the same one as you. More money than sense.

I think you should buy a gun and next time you see him, shoot him in the face.

Either that or we need to pass a law so no-one can use a camera unless you say so. :bat: :rules: :nono:
 
Silent-Sam said:
It's probably because your so much better than he is.

I can't belive other people think they know how to use a camera, and the same one as you. More money than sense.

I think you should buy a gun and next time you see him, shoot him in the face.

Either that or we need to pass a law so no-one can use a camera unless you say so. :bat: :rules: :nono:
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Was it you then?:exit:
 
David Stallard said:
is just a lack of skill stopping him focusing / tracking and then shooting, or is just showing off?
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Someone certainly is... not sure it's him though..
 
Its not just high frame rate shooting though is it, the fact that some peeps will shoot 50 frames one after the other of exactly the same thing is comparable.
They are just not very good at what they do, but we all gotta start somewhere, I'm sure they will eventually settle on the method that gets them the picture with the minimum fuss once the novelty wears off and they realise 10tb of files take some sorting out, not to mention wear and tear on equipment.
We all have to learn some how, and then throw in the "because I can" factor and it really turns in to an argument that is not worth challenging.
 
joxby said:
Its not just high frame rate shooting though is it, the fact that some peeps will shoot 50 frames one after the other of exactly the same thing is comparable..
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your exagerating now.. 50? go on you know you are :)


I wonder why they put the machine gun mode on a 4 thousand pound camera.?
 
Silent-Sam said:
It's probably because your so much better than he is.

I can't belive other people think they know how to use a camera, and the same one as you. More money than sense.

I think you should buy a gun and next time you see him, shoot him in the face.

Either that or we need to pass a law so no-one can use a camera unless you say so. :bat: :rules: :nono:
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Excuuuuse me! sorry if I hit a nerve ;)

Did I say I was better than him? No! I have seen this guy many many times at Brands (so not a beginner then) and it's always the same, I just 'don't get it', it's funny to start with but get's more than a little annoying after a while, but as yamahatdm900 said earlier - it does help you to move on to other parts of the circuit.

I suppose if he can afford a couple of mk4's and wear them out in a season that's fine - I was fortunate enough to be given the camera as a thank you for some work I did last season, so I have taken the time to try and learn how it works so I don't have to shoot 50 shots of the same thing, guess I will have to try it out on machine gun mode one day to see what all the fuss is about.

Seriously: I didn't mean for this to be a 'bitchy' thread, if I have offended anyone I apologise.

.DAVID.
 
yamahatdm900 said:
:I had a similar thing at Silverstone last year. I can't remeber if is was MotoGP or WSBK but there was a lady stood by me and she was rattling them off like there was no tommorow and yes I do agree with you it does grate after a while.
It did make me wonder how many shots she took in a weeknd? I know I wouldn't want to sort through them all, but I suppose if it's your thing:shrug:
The bonus side to it was at least it encouraged me to move on and try a different spot:D
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sorry moto gp silverstone was the rainy one
 
Must agree about the noise factor after a wee while, that's why I use earplugs.

Of course, not having read the manual, I always use Auto mode too.

Just remember though, David, it doesn't make me better than you ;)
 
Its more of a technique thing.

Personally i machine gun when i pan. Its part of my technique that stops me flinching the camera when releasing the shutter. It seems to work for me most of the time.

I don't see an issue with it personally. Memory card space costs nothing. Not processing images takes no time. If you get the image your after or increase the chances of doing so, then why not? The 1d cameras are rated for 250k or 300k. Despite my machine gunning i still only put about 60k on my 1d each year. Thats a lot of years use.

Just putting it out there - there are legitimate reasons for doing it, and certainly a few very respected photographers i can think of that do so for a range of reasons.
 
If you don't like photographers using high speed continuous, never ever stand in a press pen!
 
If its for a job and as stated it doesnt cost you anything then maybe everything was right in his photo but he needs lots to choose from or to send to his boss or something?
 
I have had a 1d4 for 23 days and love the 10fps sound but I don't use it. Saying that I did use it a bit today to see how it goes at cricket and am currently deleting most of the 300 shots due to pretty much duplication but mainly only used 3-4 frame bursts.
 
Little John said:
I have had a 1d4 for 23 days and love the 10fps sound but I don't use it. Saying that I did use it a bit today to see how it goes at cricket and am currently deleting most of the 300 shots due to pretty much duplication but mainly only used 3-4 frame bursts.
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Who plays cricket in January in the UK? You don't see that very often.
 
There is a time and place for machine gunning such as the example given by Dunganick above, but I've often found it to be a cover up for lack of skill, particularly in field sports and the like where you see people spray and pray, hoping they've got the ball in shot. Unfortunately, its the way things are going to stay now where a lot of the technical skill has been taken out of sports photography. I really believe that it won't be that long before people can get very high quality stills taken from video cameras, thus removing the need for timing ltogether, much the same as has happened with focussing and exposure.
I'd love to see how some of these people coped using a manual focus 400mm at f2.8 on a side lit subject moving at speed using ever changing manual exposure settings with a limit of 36 exposures per roll and the number of rolls shot being monitored by a grumpy picture editor!
Still -thats progress!
 
When I started going to press jobs and heard everyone elses camera doing the machine gun noise I presumed I was doing something wrong by not machine gunning so I set up the bracketing for and set my camera on high speed multi (had a D3 at the time so it's what 7fps?) but when it came to editing down to file I found that 99% of the time I was choosing the middle, non-compensated, image so after a few jobs I went back to shooting one frame at a time. Noticed some of the machine gunners giving me funny looks when I would shoot one frame and move on.
 
Ploddles said:
Who plays cricket in January in the UK? You don't see that very often.
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Bolton League have an indoor knockout, flouescent lighting with blue/green walls, one shooting angle from above in the viewing gallery so all the right handed players have their backs to you. Some of the games have been entertaining (never thought I would say that about cricket) played with good pace, tried to score and the lads having a laugh but some just went for the walls to score a single run.

Semis and final next weekend.
 
brianwar said:
When I started going to press jobs and heard everyone elses camera doing the machine gun noise I presumed I was doing something wrong by not machine gunning so I set up the bracketing for and set my camera on high speed multi (had a D3 at the time so it's what 7fps?) but when it came to editing down to file I found that 99% of the time I was choosing the middle, non-compensated, image so after a few jobs I went back to shooting one frame at a time. Noticed some of the machine gunners giving me funny looks when I would shoot one frame and move on.
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Using high speed continuous on press jobs has nothing to do with exposure, it's about facial expression and posture. Leaving aside blinking, and unless you are John Redwood, an expression changes multiple times in a second, as do hand and body gestures.

Good luck getting the defining frame with one shot every time.
 
Personally I preferred to leave my 1D on continuous, but only shot one frame at a time and have had a giggle at people shooting bursts of every car that came past (and equally people trackside just having a gossip and not shooting ;) ).

But at the end of the day, if people are getting the results that they/their clients want and not obstructing anyone else etc let them get on with it! I'd rather not need to import and trawl through extra images but if other people want to they're welcome!
 
What i have learnt David is that there are three types of technique:

1) Ones I use

2) Ones i no longer use because they didnt work well for me

3) Ones i have yet to try

There is no "wrong" (y)
 
desantnik said:
What i have learnt David is that there are three types of technique:

1) Ones I use

2) Ones i no longer use because they didnt work well for me

3) Ones i have yet to try

There is no "wrong" (y)
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Sir - you are a true genius! That is a superb reply and I will store that one away for future use (with your permission of course) ;)

.DAVID.
 
By all means... it my new Zen philosophy for 2012 :D
 
Technique is largely irrelevant if they're getting the results. It's the ones who aren't getting the results with several thousand pounds worth of equipment but someone is still filling in the forms or even paying for them to be there in a media vest that get me.

Such is life, not worth getting worked up over it.
 
Don't worry too much about people being there for no reason... media accreditation is pretty tough in most cases, without publication backing you won't get it and without actual publication you won't keep it.

Try for yourself if you think it just takes a chancer ;-)

As for kit, to be honest, its largely irrelevant, the promoters only want publicity, they don't care what is used to capture images nor how good your images are.

I see more exotic gear in the hands of the ticket buying public than I do trackside... however none of them ever provide media coverage, which is why the vests say "media" and not "jammy g1t" on them ;-)
 
I just don't follow how someone can have all that equipment and many, many years of experience doing something and turn out such poor/boring shots. Then somehow they convince someone that they're worth publishing.

You evidently have some fairly substantial accreditation backing to be doing the events you cover but I'd say you're putting out work deserving of that. At three out of every four established professional motorsport photographers I see work from aren't doing that which makes me wonder how they ever got to be there, let alone how they're still there years later.

Granted I'm not looking as much at events as big as yours (which I'm sure have more money around them so the people covering them need to be up to snuff, making it worth getting/necessary to have good people working on them) but given how many people seem to want media access surely there are good photographers who'd go so far as to work smaller events for free for experience and will get better results than the people I'm encountering? It's all about publicity as you say but aren't better photos better publicity?

I'm not trolling for an argument or having an internet rant, I'm genuinely curious how it comes about because people like yourself comment that accreditation is hard to get - and I've no doubt you know what you're talking about given your body of work - but there seem to be a lot of people that don't really deserve it managing to get it.
As much as anything else I enjoy looking at motorsport photography and it's a massive disappointment when I see the official media coverage of an event that's substandard. Frequently the official photos are among the, if not the, least good photos I'll see from an event barring those that are equipment-limited (phone camera photos and the like).
 
Its hard to get accreditation because there are only a limited number of publications that will actually publish motorsport photos... thats the simple answer!

Without a publisher backing you, you won't get accredited (because you aren't "media" you are just a tog!) and still today there is a lot of negativity towards internet only publications - some series look more favourably, but most don't...

So, limited oppurtunity and so you have to wait for the chance for a "slot" to be free'ed up - there aren't many brand new (paper) publications coming out these days!

As for if the official photos are dissapointing... well, it does depend on where you look, which race series. Some are good, some are very good, some are so-so... the top end race series tend to attract better official photography (and I'll tell you why in a minute!)

Some of the "official photo sets" are made up of making togs give away images in return for accreditation (you might be working for a publication but also have to provide the race series freebies or you don't get in).... when faced with this, do you just give them "something" or "something decent"?

Other race series rely again on donations (unofficially, "you scratch my back etc") and yet more have "uncle bob" doing the "official" photography. Lastly, some employ a series photographer of quality (like Jacob Ebry (other photography services are also available LOL)).... this of course is how you get top notch official photography.... oh and some do a combo of some/all of the above!

Its a complex subject thats rarely talked about in public and no doubt telling you what I have will draw some flak from some quarters!
 
desantnik said:
What i have learnt David is that there are three types of technique:

1) Ones I use

2) Ones i no longer use because they didnt work well for me

3) Ones i have yet to try

There is no "wrong" (y)
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That's pretty cool :)
 
desantnik said:
*Snip*
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I appreciate you being straightforward about it.
I gathered there'd be a lot of that about, there always is in anything where someone wants something from someone else and I'm not sure why the people involved always try and keep it quiet when it's so obvious it would be going on. Bartering for things isn't particularly underhand is it?

I guess my question is more why aren't the people taking poor/average photos being pushed out in favour of people who can take better ones? There must be a queue for the slots with plenty of people who're happy with things like photos-for-access so why aren't publishers working through it? It just seems like it should be a publisher's market with people willing to bend over backwards to get a vest yet the publishers are settling for naff photography.

I can't understand why someone would give away poor shots just to get accreditation if that's what you're alluding to, it's not costing anything to give them better ones is it? Why would you even be taking the poor shots in the first place? Never mind the fact it makes you look bad to have your name on them.
Wouldn't the people getting the lesser shots see the shots going to the photographer's backer, or the shots used to gain accreditation, and say "Hang on, why are those so much better than ours?".
 
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I think we are assuming two things that might not be accurate.

1. All editors/buyers can identify a poor image from a good one.

2. The quality of the images is the area of main concern for client (as opposed to availability, cost, friendship, favours, ease of access, those above)


There are some events, organisers and some circuits that are not difficult to get accreditation for. However the ones that most photographers with an interest in motorsports want to attend are fairly well managed (whilst still too lax in my opinion).

I would also suggest that the quality of images has very little to do with being a successful photographer, being good at selling your services and socialising/social media plays a much bigger role.

There are also other things to muddy the water around the expectation by 95% of papers to only accept free images for their publication due to the huge number of images by accredited and unaccredited photographers. This means most of the media trackside will be working for some clients for free. Certainly i have a client that i am not paid by to help secure event accreditation, as much as i dislike it.

Apologies if that didn't make any sense - I'm fighting a potentially life ending bout of man flu.
 
dunganick said:
I think we are assuming two things that might not be accurate.

1. All editors/buyers can identify a poor image from a good one.

2. The quality of the images is the area of main concern for client (as opposed to availability, cost, friendship, favours, ease of access, those above)
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For 1, and obviously this is obviously heavily variable, but some of the images I was thinking of when I made my first post in the thread were brought to my attention by someone who isn't photographically minded. You're right it shouldn't be assumed that in all cases someone who isn't a photographer will pick a good image over a bad one but it must be true in some cases, particularly if the images are really weak. Some of what I'm regarding as poor is undoubtedly photographer pickiness rather than outright fault but I'd expect someone trying to be a photographer to be able to set out why their stuff is better (not why the other guy's stuff is worse, that's getting into bitchiness) and then be hired over the other guy.

As for 2 other than friendship I would expect most of those factors to be easily replaceable with so many people photographing events, but I may be overestimating how many people actually would make a go at photographing for media rather than just saying it's something they'd like to do and never trying to make it happen or just wanting a media pass so they can stand the other side of the fence because they think it'll give them better shots.
 
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