Spa F1. What went wrong?

[agent orange]

Below are a sample of the sort of problems I encountered. A few that turned out ok are here.

My main question for all is why are they not sharp and out of focus? The primary subject is blurred and the photo in general seems quite grainy to me. All were shot with single centre AF point, AI Servo. Worth pointing out I use very mild glasses for driving and wasn't wearing them but have adjusted the view finder to produce sharp images. Is that a problem? Last time I picked up an SLR I wasn't using glasses for distance.

I was using a Canon 1D MK2 with a hired 70-200mm f2.8 L IS II and occasionally a x1.4 too. All were hand held which I found a real challenge to steady the combined body and lens weight.

#1 Straight forward shot 1/500, f/5.6, ISO 100, focal length 255 mm, 70-200mm with x1.4.

027.jpg by AgentOrange71, on Flickr

#2

057.jpg by AgentOrange71, on Flickr

#3

234.jpg by AgentOrange71, on Flickr

#4 Through fencing with manual focus on centre of track. DoF too shallow for car to be in focus??

359.jpg by AgentOrange71, on Flickr

#5

396.jpg by AgentOrange71, on Flickr

 

[JohnStewart]

It's hard to be 100% sure, but I would suggest that it's motion blur caused by you keeping the camera static whilst the shutter is open. The cars are still moving quickly, and cover enough distance whilst the shutter is open to appear slightly blurry. The backgrounds seem to be sharp, which suggests that you weren't tracking the car whilst capturing the image.

 

[agent orange]

That would be certainly true for the images shown here as in these I was not attempting to pan. Perhaps naively, I was working on the assumption with the single centre AF point active all I had to do was wait for the car to approach that AF point then machine gun the shutter and at least one would be in focus.

Also a couple of these were 1/800 and 1/4000ths of a second which I assumed would be enough to freeze the cars sharp.

In addition with the DoF I believed I had a large margin of error for the car(s) to be in focus.

Looking at the active AF point I wonder if this is the primary reason? I did move the AF point from the centre with the intention of focusing on the cars as they were more than halfway through the corner.


392 AF Point by AgentOrange71, on Flickr

Is it worth setting a few of the 1D custom function to expand AF points and change the sensitivity on AI Servo?

 

[snapzz]

Perhaps naively, I was working on the assumption with the single centre AF point active all I had to do was wait for the car to approach that AF point then machine gun the shutter and at least one would be in focus.

Better option would have been to lock the focus on the target and track until in the correct position then press the shutter.

 

[petersmart]

Looking at #5 large size on Flickr it appers that the nearest verge of the road is quite sharp as it enters the picture but then starts to lose focus before the cars.

But that doesn't explain why the spectators appear reasonably sharp.

.

 

[agent orange]

Looking at #5 large size on Flickr it appers that the nearest verge of the road is quite sharp as it enters the picture but then starts to lose focus before the cars.

But that doesn't explain why the spectators appear reasonably sharp.

.

f7.1 on a 200mm with the cars being in excess of 300ft away might explain why the near verge and spectators appear sharp. Reckoning that gave me a DoF of 260ft.

Better option would have been to lock the focus on the target and track until in the correct position then press the shutter.

I'm tending to lean towards my technique being the biggest problem here and I think a misunderstanding of how to use the AF causing the problem.

Time to practise I think! Thanks.