The above is a photo of the #42 Acura TLX driven by Peter Cunningham, competing in the Pirelli World Challenge Series. The photo was taken from the inside of Turn 1 of the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. This location is a great place for spectators to take photos because you are fairly close to the track surface, and you have an unobstructed view.

The image settings for this photo were 1/200 sec., F/11, ISO200. The camera was set to shutter priority (Tv setting on a Canon), where I selected a shutter speed of 1/200 second. This shutter speed allowed me to keep the car sharp, while introducing blur in the wheels and the background. This is accomplishing by panning, or moving the camera and following the car in your camera's viewfinder, as you are firing off the shutter. Panning is a technique that requires practice to perfect, as smooth movements are the key to getting the car to remain sharp. If you find that you are not getting any sharp photos, try a quicker shutter speed such as 1/500 sec, then as you feel more comfortable, slow down your shutter speed a little at a time.

My camera was set to auto focus tracking (Servo AF for a Canon). This allows the camera to adjust focus on moving objects. Finally, I was shooting with my camera set to high speed burst mode, which allowed my Canon 60D to shoot at 5.3 frames per second. When shooting panning shots, shooting a burst of shots allows you to review and select the sharpest photo.

Post-processing of this image consisted of initial adjustments in Adobe Lightroom, with further processing made using the Nik Collection software to make adjustments based on my artistic preferences.

Prints of this image are available here. Thanks for reading my blog, and feel free to leave comments or questions.

Romel

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