Monster Trucks!

[ahightower]

We went to a monster truck show at the Texas Motor Speedway Dirt Track Friday night for my son's 5th birthday. I thought I would post a few shots to show how the Olympus E-410 performed in my novice hands. I used the kit lenses, 14-42 for the up close daylight shots, and 40-150 for the night time action shots taken from a distance. For those evening shots, I used S priority, shutter speed at 1/200th, and ISO 1600. Focusing was tough at first, the camera tended to settle on the fence grid between the track and the stands, but by manually prefocusing on a certain area and waiting for the action to come into view, I had some success.

I'll be the first to admit they are not the highest quality by any stretch, but at least I captured the memories.

In between monster truck heats and freestyle events, they had some smaller 4x4 races, and some dirt bike stunt riders, so I threw in a couple of those photos as well.

I've yet to do any post processing, perhaps I'll re-post a few to demonstrate if I get significant improvement. In fact, any tips would be appreciated. I'm anxious to see how much noise reduction I can get out of Elements 5.0. I'm not familiar with the program yet, I need to learn how to apply noise reduction to a whole set of files in one step, rather than one photo at a time. Still, even as they are, it's not bad for ISO 1600, I think.

Anyway, here they are straight out of the box. I can't say I feel the urge to do this type of event again, it's awfully noisy and dusty, but every boy should get to experience it at least once, and my three sons and I had a blast!

More can be found on my flickr page. Thanks for looking.

A close-up of some scary stuff adorning the "War Wizard"...




The pit stop/waiting area approximately 300 yards across the track:


Hey, why not put a Mustang body on that chassis?


...or a '57 Chevy...






Obligatory Bigfoot photo:


Thanks for having a look!
--

Andrew
Fort Worth, Texas
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahightower

[planespotter]

The Mustang is a trip!!!!....lol....you got some great shots!!!!!!