Digital Camera World » action photography

Motorsport photography tips from start to finish line

jmeyer — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:01:34 +0000

In our latest Professional Photographer to the Rescue post our professional photographer takes our apprentice into the rough and tumble world of motorsport photography to shoot a leg of the British Rally Championship.

Meet our professional photographer

Jakob Ebrey runs Silverstone-based Jakob Ebrey Photography, the UK’s leading national motorsports photography agency. He’s the official British Rally Championship photographer and also shoots many other high-profile motorsports events. See more of his work at www.jakobebrey.com

Meet our apprentice

Trucker Dave King hails from Essex. He’s been taking photos since he was 15, and used to help out pro photographers at Arena Essex Raceway shooting all sorts of motorsport photography in the ’80s. Now using a DSLR, he asked for our help to improve his sports action shots.

Technique Assessment

Set Shutter Priority Mode
“Taking control of your shutter speed is critical when shooting motorsport photography,” advises Jakob, “so I got Dave to use Tv (Shutter Priority) mode, so he could set his shutter speed while his camera takes care of the aperture. I generally want a shutter speed of 1/250-1/500 sec to freeze the action in my motorsport photography, unless I’m panning for motion blur.”

Manage your ISO
“To make sure Dave’s DSLR is letting him set a good and fast shutter speed I got him to manually increase his ISO,” says Jakob. “It was a dull day, so we were shooting at ISO400 and 800 for most of the day. If you don’t increase your ISO, even shooting on your lenses widest aperture (such as f/2.8 or f/5.6) won’t achieve a resulting fast enough shutter speed.”

PAGE 1: Meet our professional photographer and apprentice
PAGE 2: Motorsport photography tips for during the shoot
PAGE 3: Final tips from our professional photographer
PAGE 4: Our professional photographer’s recommended gear
PAGE 5: Shot of the Day

Movement photography: camera panning techniques to convey a sense of speed

crutter — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:02:41 +0000

Camera panning techniques look and sound complicated. In reality, though, anyone with a manual mode and the patience to practice can learn how to pan a camera. In this tutorial we’ll show you how you can use slower shutter speeds to add a greater sense of drama to your movement photography.

All images by Chris Rutter

Camera panning is a skill that takes practice to get right. Following fast-moving subjects accurately, and choosing the best shutter speed to balance getting the subject sharp and sufficiently blurring the background isn’t something that you pick up immediately in your movement photography. But it’s incredibly rewarding when everything comes together.

If you’re new to movement photography, start your experiments using camera panning with subjects that travel in a straight line, perpendicular to the direction you’re shooting in, such as racing cars moving along a straight part of the track.

In this situation you should set the camera to shutter priority mode, select a speed of 1/250 sec and make sure that the drive mode is on continuous shooting.

You should then manually focus the lens on the point where you’ll shoot your subjects. This will avoid problems with the autofocus changing the focus point during your pan.

Next, position yourself so that you’re facing the point you’ve focused on, and turn your body so that you can pick up the subject as early as possible as it travels towards you.

Swivel smoothly, keeping the subject in the same position in the frame, for as long as possible as it travels past you.

To get the smoothest pan you should try to swivel from your hips, rather than just your shoulders, and fire the camera in the middle of this movement.

Remember to continue panning well after you’ve finished shooting, because stopping too early can create a jerky movement, which will spoil your movement photography.

Once you’ve perfected this camera panning technique, and you can smoothly follow the action, you can start to reduce the shutter speed to give more blur and a greater impression of speed in your movement photography.

Start by dropping it to 1/125 sec and then 1/60 sec or even slower, but make sure that you’re keeping the main subject sharp.

With the basic panning action mastered, you can use this technique in more difficult situations such as when subjects are moving diagonally towards you, or on even more unpredictable subjects such as moving animals or footballers.

This random movement makes it trickier to get as much background blur, because you need to use a faster shutter speed than if you’re shooting something more predictable.

Unlike with subjects moving perpendicular to you, it’s also better to select predictive autofocus mode, because the distance between you and the target will vary..

PAGE 1: What is panning?
PAGE 2: 3 simple steps to panning like a pro
PAGE 3: How to choose the best shutter speed for movement photography
PAGE 4: Final tips for taking successful panning photos

Sabre Switch TriggerSmart review: is this the ultimate tool for high-speed photos?

jmeyer — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:03:57 +0000

The Sabre Switch TriggerSmart is a motion, light and sound detection system that allows photographers to capture incredible high-speed photos. But is it worth its price tag? Find out in our Sabre Switch TriggerSmart review.

TriggerSmart is a simple, portable and fairly inexpensive introduction to automated high-speed photography. The system consists of a battery-powered control box, a pair of sensors, two mini tripod stands and connecting wires.

At first glance you’d be forgiven for wondering about the rough and ready exterior, but once it’s up and running things are more impressive.

The sensors can be configured to send an infrared beam between each other, with a shot taken if the beam is cut. Alternatively, a sudden sound or pulse of light will trigger the system.

This makes it possible to capture the most precisely-timed mini explosions, water splashes or shattering glass.

The sensitivity of each detection method can be adjusted via the control box, as can the delay between detection and shutter release, and the number of shots fired each time.

However with just dials to play with, you’ll have to resort to trial and error to nail the right settings. Despite this, and a likelihood that you’ll need a separate adaptor to connect the system to your camera, TriggerSmart is an effective photography aid.

Price: £239
Buy it: www.flaghead.co.uk

Score: 4/5

Professional Photographer to the Rescue: ski photography tips for dramatic action

jmeyer — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:01:19 +0000

In our latest Professional Photographer to the Rescue post our professional photographer takes our apprentice to the slopes in Switzerland for an Alpine adventure in ski photography.

Meet our professional photographer

Ross Woodhall originally trained as an electrician, but discovered he could make a living from photography while working as a caretaker in a ski resort.

Having started out by taking pictures of punters on the piste, he is now a top commercial photographer specialising in extreme sports. You can check out his adrenaline-fuelled portfolio of pictures at www.rosswoodhall.com

Meet our apprentice

Chris Harden is from Rochdale and spent six years in the army, where he trained as a mechanic and learnt to ski. He works as a truck driver, and wants to learn to improve his action photography. We took him to Valais in Switzerland to brush up on his parallel turns and his high-speed DSLR shooting skills.

Technique Assessment

After a couple of warm up runs on the La Fouly blue runs, Ross took a timeout to show Chris how he could set up his D3000 better for action shooting…

Check the manual! 
Chris had been using the Sports Scene mode for his previous action pictures. But I told him that he had to use Manual if he was going to survive in the snow!

Focus on the turns
For tracking shots use the AF-C continuous autofocus mode, and set the AF Area to Dynamic. This gives you the best shot at keeping a high-speed skier sharp.

Keep shooting
A motorwind is the sports photographer’s best friend. Use the fastest continuous release mode your camera offers – Chris’ Nikon D3000 offers 3fps (frames per second).

Bright light blues
Ross says… We shot in Manual with the same settings, but Chris’ shots appeared darker than mine. Turning off the LCD Auto Dim option in his menu soon solved this discrepancy.

PAGE 1: Meet our professional photographer and apprentice
PAGE 2: Ski photography tips for during the shoot
PAGE 3: Final tips from our professional photographer
PAGE 4: Our professional photographer’s recommended gear
PAGE 5: Shot of the Day

Continuous shooting mode: why more is better!

jmeyer — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:30:11 +0000

Find out how to use your digital camera’s continuous shooting mode to boost your chances of getting the perfect photo.

Whether you’re shooting high-octane extreme sport or photographing the kids at play in the garden, capturing the peak of action a single frame at a time requires lots of skill and concentration.

Even the best sports action snappers wouldn’t dream of using single-frame shooting mode when it all kicks off in the viewfinder – they use continuous shooting mode.

This setting allows the shutter to keep firing off frames for as long as the shutter button is pressed. It increases your chances of catching the pinnacle of split-second action when shooting in short bursts, so use it whenever you’re photographing movement.

But what counts as movement? Well, fast-paced action from motor sports through to athletics are right up there.

However, remember that slower moving subjects can benefit from continuous shooting mode too, such as when you’re trying to capture a particular nuance in a natural candid portrait.

Continuous shooting mode is also great to use when shooting in low light, or at slow shutter speeds hand-held. It will help avoid camera shake because the camera becomes steadier while your finger is rested on the shutter button rather than snatching at it in single-frame shooting mode.

How to use continuous shooting to capture every moment

Locate the shooting mode
Your DSLR’s shooting mode may have a dedicated button on the camera body. If not, it’ll be buried somewhere in the  menu system. Find out where it is and how to activate it quickly so you can access it when you need it.

Fine tune your fps
Some DSLRs have the ability to customise the continuous shooting frame rate. For high-speed action choose the maximum frames per second, but for general photography you may prefer a slower rate to conserve memory card space.

Select a fast shutter speed
For the best results choose Shutter Priority exposure mode and watch out to make sure your shutter speed doesn’t creep too low. Aim for at least 1/60sec for general photography and 1/500sec for fast action.

Flash photography made easy: how to use rear curtain flash for cool motion effects

jmeyer — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:00:47 +0000

In our latest instalment of our Shoot Like a Pro series on flash photography learn how to master the art of rear curtain flash photography and improve your action photography in an instant.

Image by Dusan Zidar / iStock

Rear (or second) curtain flash is a setting on your digital SLR that instructs the flash to fire at the end of an exposure rather than the beginning.

This flash photography tip is relatively easy to master and can be used to give your action shots a wonderful sense of movement and energy.

It can be a little tricky, but all you need is a bit of practice to get the effect you want. Typically, the burst of light from a flashgun is much faster than a camera’s shutter speed – for example, a Nikon SB900 has a flash speed of 1/880 sec at full power.

If your camera’s shutter speed is set to 1/60sec and you’re also using a flash, it will appear to the naked eye that the shutter and flash are firing simultaneously.

However, the flash is really like a super-fast exposure within the longer (1/60 sec) exposure.

Image by Mehmet Salih Guler / iStock

Don’t stop moving
The default setting for most D-SLRs specifies that the flash fires at the beginning of an exposure and in most cases this is perfectly fine.

However, if you find yourself in a shooting situation where you want to use a slower shutter speed, such as 0.5 sec, you’ll start to notice the flash firing within the longer exposure.

If your subject is moving – whether it’s dancers on a dance floor or fast-moving cyclists – and you want to combine long-exposure panning techniques with flash, you’ll notice that when the flash fires at the beginning of the exposure it will freeze the subject, and the subsequent movement throughout the remaining exposure will be recorded on top.

This freezing of the action before the movement can make the subject look like it’s moving backwards through the frame.

The solution? Set the flash to fire at the end of the long exposure and you’ll freeze the action and capture the movement created by the long exposure. This will create a more dynamic and action-packed shot.

Rear curtain flash is guaranteed to improve your action shots, but you’ll need to practice the technique until you get it right.

Image by Valentin Casarsa / iStock

Take a portrait with your DSLR set to rear curtain sync and move the camera during a long exposure. You should get a sharp shot of your subject and also capture interesting movement in the background.

Practice makes perfect
Combine slow shutter speeds with flash, set your camera to rear (or second) curtain sync and shoot some action. It’s best to master your technique in your own time, rather than trying it out on location when it’s essential you get your shot first time.

Understanding shutter speed as a creative tool: freeze and pan with confidence

jmeyer — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 11:30:27 +0000

Understanding shutter speed as a creative tool is essential if you want to produce images that are about movement – whether you’re freezing action, smoothing out running water or panning the camera to add motion blur.

The shutter speed often seems to take second place to more obvious creative controls such as aperture and depth of field, so we’re going to show you how important understanding shutter speed is to your creative repertoire; we’ll show you how to take control of your shutter speeds and how to turn what would have been a good shot into a great shot.

Whether it’s a ghostly seascape or the silken drapes of a cascading waterfall, the results you can get by modifying the shutter speed can show the world around us in a way that the eye can’t see. Capture the drag of a receding wave or pan a speeding motorcycle and your images will have not only dimension, but panache.

Contrary to most other types of photography, it’s the lack of light that’s often required for creative slow shutter-speed work, especially in the landscape. As night draws in, longer shutter speeds are required to correctly expose an image.

You can recreate low-light conditions during the day using neutral density filters to reduce light levels without altering the colour of the image.

Six- and 10-stop ND filters can give shutter speeds as slow as 30 seconds in bright daylight. This will make clouds drag across the sky, waves will lose all texture completely, and any movement at all will become merely a suggestion.

There are plenty of other accessories to help control shutter speed. A cable release is vital for timing the shutter presses with your hands off the camera to avoid camera shake. Similarly, tripods are essential, although some sports shooters prefer monopods because they give a great deal of rotational freedom.

When shooting long tripod-mounted exposures, you can ensure maximum sharpness by using the mirror lock-up feature. When you press the shutter, the mirror flips upwards, the shutter blades open and close, and then the mirror flips back down. This clattering action can cause image softness, especially at longer focal lengths.

By engaging mirror lock-up, the first shutter press flips the mirror upwards, and the second press takes the shot. But use a cable release (or the self-timer) so your hands can stay completely off the camera. Turn to page 74 for more tips on mirror lock-up.

Creative use of shutter speed isn’t all about slowing down exposures, however. Using fast shutter speeds and flash to freeze action or capture the magnificence of a splash of water in mid air – as the image on the previous pages demonstrates – is also important to consider.

How to shoot (and edit) pictures of planes in flight

jmeyer — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 01:00:25 +0000

Aircraft photography is a genre in its own right, and while single aircraft – whether on the ground or in flight – can make great subjects, airshow displays featuring formations of colourful planes twisting and swooping through the sky present some of the best opportunities for capturing truly spectacular pictures of planes. Below are some of our best photography tips and post-processing advice for getting stunning pictures of planes.

If you want to try your hand at capturing these dramatic subjects, you’ll need to find out when and where airshows are taking place. While you might have to travel some distance to the bigger events, there are plenty of smaller shows spread across the country throughout the summer.

When you’re photographing aircraft, using the right kit and shooting techniques will make it easier to capture the fast-moving action. To get close to airborne subjects a telephoto lens is a must.

If you’re using a lens longer than 200mm, you should use a monopod for support – a monopod offers more flexibility of movement than a tripod, while still providing much better stability than hand-holding.

Finally, don’t position yourself near any tall or overhead objects that may encroach on your field of view. You’ll be annoyed if you pan the camera, only to find a lamppost has ruined your shot!

Set up your camera to shoot pictures of planes in flight

Camera setup
Set your camera to Aperture Priority (Av) mode. The lighting conditions can change quickly when you’re outdoors, so start with the aperture at f/8, and open it up if you don’t have enough light – we were shooting on an overcast day, so needed to open the aperture up to our lens’s widest setting of f/4. Keep the ISO setting as low as possible, so you don’t get noise in the smooth tones of the sky.

Start at around ISO200, and increase this if need be to enable you to use faster shutter speeds. Keep an eye on your shutter speed throughout the day; ideally you don’t want it to drop below 1/1000sec in order to capture sharp action shots. You may need to push the ISO to 800 if the light drops, but if you keep the aperture wide you should be able to stick with between 100 and 400 on a good day.

Use your AF
A telephoto lens will enable you to get close to the aerial action, and we were using a 70-200mm f/4; this lens suited our needs as we were out shooting all day. Make sure the lens is switched to auto focus, and as you’ll be using Continuous shooting mode switch off your image stabilisation, as this can slow down the lens. As long as the shutter speed is around 1/1000sec or above you won’t need image stabilisation enabled, but if the speed drops below this you’ll need to turn it on.

Drive mode
You’ll need to set the drive mode to Continuous to fire off rapid bursts of shots. Your camera should have a direct control button to access the Drive mode settings. Remember, you’ll fill your memory card up quickly when shooting at these speeds, so use the largest-capacity card you have, and pack plenty of spares.

The right stance
Adopting the right stance and holding the camera correctly will make it easier to pan the camera and capture sharp shots. Keep your feet apart, so you can twist your body to track planes flying overhead without losing your balance, and keep your elbows apart and out so your body becomes a supportive frame for the camera. If you’re shooting handheld rather than using a monopod, place one hand under the lens to keep it steady.

Raw benefits
Shoot in raw, so that you can rescue as much data as possible at the editing stage if need be. It can be tricky to expose aerial scenes correctly, as the sky and planes will have different metering values.

If it’s sunny you’ll need to watch that the highlights don’t overexpose and blow out; if it’s a grey and overcast day you’ll be battling with noise issues and trying to keep the ISO as low as you can without compromising too much on image quality.

Check the histogram regularly as you’re shooting, and adjust your settings if you’re consistently blowing the highlights.

PAGE 1: How to shoot pictures of planes
PAGE 2: How to edit pictures of planes

Water drop photography: make a splash with high-speed flash

jmeyer — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:00:58 +0000

Shooting water drop photography is a fun and simple way to get creative effects, particularly when you use food colouring to make a range of cool colours. By using high-speed flash you’re sure to freeze the action and get impressive results – and it’s so easy to do! In this tutorial we’re going to show you how to make your own home water drop photography setup, and demonstrate how to capture the drops in a split second.

For water drop photography you’ll need your DSLR and a suitable lens for close-ups (a macro lens will work best), a tripod, an external flashgun and a transmitter unit.

We need to use flash in order to freeze the water drops, as this enables you to capture faster movement than your camera’s fastest shutter speed. We’ll be using the Manual setting on our DSLR, and using the transmitter to fire our flashgun.

For the flash to be effective you’ll need to shoot in a fairly dark room, so close the curtains or blinds. By shooting in the dark you’ll also be able to use a narrow aperture in order to get a good depth of field, so that the milk drop is in focus from front to back. We’ll also show you how to enhance the contrast and colours of your milk drop images in Photoshop Elements.

01 Set the stage
Use a table or worktop surface with a wall behind to lean your backdrop against. For the backdrop use coloured paper, and position the bottom half of the paper on the table to create an infinity curve.

Fill a glass bowl with water (you can also use milk and other liquids), and place it on top of the paper. Next fill a bottle with water and food colouring, and shake well!

02 Position the bottle
We’ve used a couple of stands, a pole, a clamp to hold the bottle in place and some gaffer tape to attach the clip to the pole. If you don’t have any stands, you could place a curtain pole across a couple of chairs and tape your bottle to it. Keep the cap on the bottle for now, as we’re not ready to start dripping yet.

03 Position the camera and focus
Place your camera on a tripod and angle it down overlooking the bowl, with the surface of the milk filling most of the frame. Set the camera to Manual focus, hold or suspend a ruler or pen over the centre of the bowl roughly where you expect the milk drops will hit the surface, and focus on it.

04 Set up the flash
Set your flashgun to Slave mode and place it next to the bowl on its stand to one side, then attach the transmitter to your camera’s hotshoe (if your camera doesn’t have this feature built in). Set the transmitter and the flashgun to the same channel. Close the curtains or blinds to darken the room, and set the flash to at least 1/16 power to start with – you may need to adjust this once you’ve set your exposure.

05 Set the exposure
Set your camera to Manual mode, and set the shutter speed to 1/125 sec to sync with the flash. Next select a narrow aperture, such as f/13, so that you can capture a wide depth of field to ensure the milk drops are in focus, and set the ISO to 100 to capture all the detail of the effect. Fire off some test shots, and fine-tune the exposure or flash settings if required.

06 Start shooting
When you’re all set to go, remove the bottle cap and wait a few moments for the milk to start dripping. For the best effects you want to capture a drop just as it hits the surface of the water; it’s all about timing, and some trial and error will be involved, so keep checking the results every few shots. You can add different colours to the water for different effects.

07 Contrast and colour
Open your Raw image in Adove Camera Raw. For our example, we set Exposure to +0.15 and Recovery to 15 to pull back some highlights. To boost the contrast we set Blacks to 20 and Contrast to +50. We also set Clarity +50 – this really brings out the fine patterns in the liquid, and makes a big difference to the effect. To boost the colours we set Saturation to +6.

08 Crop and sharpen
Click Open Image to open the file in the Elements editor. Select the Crop tool, and crop the image to remove extraneous background areas; a portrait or square crop will work best. Use the Clone Stamp tool to tidy up any distracting splashes, then sharpen the image; we’ve used Unsharp Mask, setting Amount to 85%, Radius to 6 pixels and Threshold to 3.

Usain Bolt grabs photographer’s camera, takes better photos than most of us

jmeyer — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:00:09 +0000

Image copyright Jimmy Wixtrom

Usain Bolt has confirmed what many N-Photo readers have long suspected: the sprinting legend prefers Nikon.

Image Credit: Usain Bolt / Aftonbladet

Moments after his historic win in the men’s 200m at the London Olympics, Bolt strolled past the track-side pit of sports photographers and snatched a Nikon D4 from pro snapper Jimmy Wixtrom (seen grinning in the image above).

Wixtrom, who shoots for Aftonbladet, Scandinavia’s largest newspaper, happily handed over his D4 and watched as Bolt snapped photos of fellow Jamaican sprinter Yohan Blake and of the track-side photographers, themselves.

Image Credit: Usain Bolt / Aftonbladet

Bolt, who passed by at least five Canon DSLRs to get to Wixtrom’s Nikon, had previously declined to pose for Wixtrom and instead promised the photographer he would get his picture after the final, Wixtrom said.

Image Credit: Usain Bolt / Aftonbladet

You can watch a video of the amazing moment over on Aftonbladet’s website.

Bolt, who showed surprisingly (and perhaps annoyingly) good prowess with the Nikon D4, has not confirmed whether he plans his own career in sports photography after his final Olympics in Rio in 2016.

Via: PetaPixel, DigitalTrends