Texas Motor Speedway Questions

[pacu]

My Canon Rebel G came with an EF 80-200mm 1:4.5-5.6 ll zoom lens on it. Would this lens be ideal for capturing some photos of Nascar this upcoming Sunday?
I bought some 800 film and will have the camera set on sports mode.

Anyone have any tips on getting some fairly decent shots at a motor sports event? I'm brand new to this and still googling quite a bit of the photography terms.

Thanks for helping out a newbie,
Pacu

[CaptainTom]

A hard question to answer since I have no idea of your photography skills.
But, hey that's never stopped me before....

You can get some good shots with your set up. You might consider a monopod so you can get really sharp shots.
Use the highest shutter speed you can. The sports mode should help here, but if you can use shutter priority and shoot faster while still being within the aperture range it will be OK... i.e. if you don't know what that means, stick with the sports mode...
Get as close as possible to the action. Use a polarizing filter if you have one. Wear ear plugs. Don't drink too much brewskies before shooting.
Have fun.

I would recommend you practice "panning". This is the art of moving the camera to follow the car. Just like a clay pidgeon shooter does with the shotgun. You can also read up on "prefocusing" and "depth of field".
All of these techniques will help you get good shots.

If this is overwhelming, just delete this message, put the film in the camera, go to the race, shoot it all up, and you will still get some fun stuff.

[engstrom]

First of all, go out, take some pictures, and learn from them so you can do it better the next time. That's really the formula that most of us use regardless of skill level.

Now, having said that a 200mm maximum folcal length on the lens is kind of short for NASCAR. Like Tom said try to get as close to the action as you can. Since it's an afternoon race you should have enough light even for your lens with its small maximum aperture. I would suggest, for a few shots at least, using a shutter speed of 1/250 or slower and panning the car (also like Tom suggested). This will blur the background but keep the car sharp if it's done right - and that's the kicker, it's hard to do right.

Have fun and post some of the pictures you get!

[aggarcia]

I attended the truck race about this time last year. TMS pictures depend on where you are seated and how close yuo are to the fence. I sat on the front straight toward turn 4. You will need to watch yuor DOF otherwise you will get a lot of fence. Pratice on your panning as you will be doing a lot if it. Good Luck.

[pacu]

Thanks ! My wife is trying to convert me from a bicycling fan to Nascar. Thanks for all your advice. Some of my practice shots have turned out nicely. I'll post some Nascar shots here when we get back.

[rphoto]

Originally Posted by pacu

Thanks ! My wife is trying to convert me from a bicycling fan to Nascar. Thanks for all your advice. Some of my practice shots have turned out nicely. I'll post some Nascar shots here when we get back.

They are both good sports I have shot the HHH 100 but I want to shot NASCAR but I would like to do it from the pits

[pacu]

Do you take a camera on the ride with you? I did . One of those Walgreens el-cheapo types. After 100 miles, sweat, GU wrappers, and the odd banana peels made that worthless camera slightly more worthless. Got a good shot of my friend downing some pickle juice!

[rphoto]

No I take most of them at the finish line. I have not ridden the ride in about 6 years. I have rode about 10 of them anywhere from 25 miles to the 100k but never made the 100 mile ride. You can see my pics of the last two rides at http://www.pbase.com/rphoto

[jerrykr]

Everything depends on your position, especially if you are going to try to shoot from your seat. If you are not where you can see the cars above the catch fence, you will have one h*ll of a time shooting thru it. This one was taken over the fence, I had a pretty good view of the pits from my seat.




If you can get a pit pass to get close to the cars and action, that would be great. Pit passes are rather expensive and you have to be a season ticket holder to buy one.

Access to anything but the general areas is very hard unless you have some kind of "in". media credentials can be obtained, but you have to be legit with a newspaper or magazine, or other media. It's all on the texasmotorspeedway.com web site.

There is a lot of stuff to shoot along the Merchandising Trailer rows. Look for the driver appearances posted at their trailers, and try to be there at that time. I got a couple last April, mostly due to prowling the rows, and a lot of luck.

Here's my gallery from April of this year to give you a couple of ideas.

http://www.pbase.com/jerrykneupper/tms__2005

Also look for "show car" appearances Thurs and Fri. at some of the local sponsor's stores, like Home Depot, Lowes, Albertson's, etc. The actual drivers rarely show up, but you can get up close to a real car, usually from a previous year, but in current paint and decal.

Hope this helps. NASCAR races are really fun to attend.

-=- Jerry -=-
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[pacu]

The race was great! Thanks everyone for the advice. I should have some pics to post on here in the next couple of days. It was worth going just to see the stealth bomber fly overhead twice. That plane is quiet! Hence the term "stealth" i guess.




The $4 beer was good too.

[engstrom]

Glad you enojyed the race and I look forward to seeing your pictures.