Motor racing with a manual-focus 800mm lens

Hello,

This was my first attempt at capturing motor racing, and it also served as a good initial test of the vintage Tokina 800mm f/8 lens I bough, detailed here.

It was an incredible learning curve to focus on and track cars at this focal length (none of these shots are cropped). I found the depth of field, even at f/16, to be tiny at 800mm, and without I.S. getting steady shots were difficult. I used a Manfrotto monopod, which gave me freedom to track cars at subtle angles.

Since this is a period lens, shooting period racing cars, I decided to expose the colours of the images with a "period" (i.e. off-beat) look. Seasoned motor sports shooters out there, any comments and criticism regarding the overall look an technique I used here?

Great David, just fab. I would think that the shots lack the punch of a Canon L but the bottom line is that you are out there having a fantastic time & getting some cool shots as well.

Way to go.

Not to mention that you paid next to nothing to boot.

Cheers,

PB

Lens too long....

Hi David,
I think your first attempt at racing is good, however, I think the lens is too long. Would you be able to get the whole car in next time? I think that camera shake would be a lot more exaggerated at 800mm than if you used a 600mm for example. You never mentioned shutter speed here either ?? which in fact is more important than the aperture in motor racing.

Good shots anyway, I like them, well done !!

Regards,
Barry.

Hi Barry,

I agree, the lens is too long (definitely) - I did also take many shots with a 300mm (which was, sometimes, too short though!) but the main objective of the day was not to shoot motor sports, it was to get to know the lens, and see if it's any good. What better subject material!

I don't think I'll ever have the budget for a Canon 500 or 600 L, nor do I think i'd want one - but if I ever need to do a serious motor sport shoot, I would not consider only using the 800. However, it was a lot of fun trying to do all this without any form of control coupling between the camera and the lens.

Sorry for not mentioning the shutter speeds (you can see them in the EXIF of the images) but all these images are with a speed of between 1/200s and 1/400s. The longer lens needs higher speeds to reduce shake, but on the other hand, 800mm exaggerates panning, so I guess it's be similar to ~1/100s with a 300mm.

Even though not having IS is a major drawback, I found that, in panning a lens, the momentum gives a lot of stability. Whereas I could pan without visible camera shake at 1/200s, I doubt if I could compose a decent still shot at the same speed.

The focus, on the other hand, involved a lot of guessing and planning. I agree that, usually, aperture is not very important (with AI Servo / autofocus) but in my case, I had to carefully plan depth of field in the absence of focusing while panning (a true master can do both well at the same time, I guess!).