Spinning Wheels | a 7 Image Story

Aug 25, 2019 | 7 Image Stories, Action, AF-S DX VR 18-200mm f3.5-5.6G IF-ED, Automobiles, IMHO, Nikon D200, Spinning Wheels

Spinning Wheels | Ferrari 360 #4Spinning Wheels | a 7 Image Story  Photographing racing cars in a race!  How hard can it be?  Set the shutter speed real high on a sunny race day and bang away.  But wait, the wheels are frozen in time and the background is in focus.  Looks like the car is standing still.  Time to practice those panning skills.  It’s one of those skills that degrade unless you practice often.

On this day I attended a meeting across the street from the race track.  After the meeting I decided to practice my panning skills and try to capture a few decent images.  Notice these images have a shutter speeds varying from 1/40 to 1/80 second and the backgrounds are all blurred due to panning.  It took a while but finally I was able to make my panning smooth enough to keep most the car in focus while allowing the wheels to blur.  These same panning skills come in handy when photographing airplanes as well.

The Ferrari 360 Type F131 is a two-seat, mid-engine, rear wheel drive sports car manufactured by Ferrari 1999 to 2005.  The black wheels and tires seem to hide the spinning wheel blur a bit.  The Lotus Exige is an agile lightweight two-seat British sports car.  It performs nicely on both the road and track.  Again, it’s hard to see the blur in those black wheels and tires.  The Porsche 911, pronounced nine eleven, is a rear engine, air-cooled German sports car.  It’s famous and distinctive design was manufactured from 1963 through1989.  The Mazda MX-5 Miata is a lightweight two-seat, front mid-engine, rear-wheel drive sports car made by Mazda.  Launched in 1999, the Porsche 911 GT3 is a high performance version of the Porsche 911 sports car.   It’s has been a successful racer.  Over 14,000 cars have been made in several variations designed for road and track.  The BMW M5 is a high performance sports sedan from the BMW 5 Series.

Each image will be posted individually this week with a bit more narrative under category Spinning Wheels.

Click any image below for a slide show!