Of course I missed out on the one non-chilly, non-cloudy day of the weekend! I had a great time fri-sat.
what a fun event… we just needed more people there.
Please excuse the pics, there just a super quick edit to get em up.
Sexy alcon brakes on the mustang 
Im am so used to driving my porsche on zee autobahn
Oh hey Danica 
Look at this fuckin guy
Reppin the sponsors
OMG ITS WILLYBEEN AND PONCH :mamoru:
Your pictures are always so much brighter and sharper than mine where mine look faded and dull by comparison. I wonder how much is in the settings, how much from the better body and how much from the better lens. I have to overexpose to keep them from being dark so I’m guessing your lens is getting more light in and the sensors in the body simply work better, but maybe you can tell me.
I have an expensive setup, and always use ND filters, but almost all of what your seeing is in the post process 
I can explain some editing tips in you’d like.
Nice pics guys :tup:
Such a great time!! Thanks Josh
What are you shooting with?
Ken Rockwell has a nice setup guide for most bodies. At full daylight, maximum aperture shouldn’t come into play for exposure. You could probably shoot at F7 and 1/250sec and still get a decently bright exposure. I’m guessing you have a Nikon and need to pump up the colors a bit on the body. The other guy probably has a newer Nikon (D40, D50 or newer) which definitely has pumped up the saturation.
Mike shoots with a D70 and 18-70MM. I believe he knows what hes doing, Im pretty sure he shot in aperture priority all day to keep the F-stop as low as possible. The older nikons def under saturate HARD though. But no matter what body you are using the color always has to be tweaked. Ex: with my D90 body and prime lens’s I still have to tweak each color Platte individually in PS to create the effect you see in these photos
Yup, just what I expected. I had some color issues with my D70 and D70s as well. Rockwell has you pump up the color to “vibrant” and most people will want to saturate even more in post-processing.
Mike: Take a look at this. It should help some.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d70/d70-settings-menus-custom.htm
That 18-70 lens is damn capable. It’s nothing fancy, but as far as kit lenses go, it’s one of the better ones out there. It definitely isn’t the limiting factor.
Some of the lack of sharpness is probably due to the small DOF (depth of field) from keeping the aperture low. When I was doing panning shots, I would flip to shutter priority and try to keep the shutter between 1/100 and 1/250, depending on the speed of the car, while keeping the aperture between f6 and f10. Seems to keep the cars nicely in focus and rolls off to a nice “soft” background.
^Wrd. Good info, The 18-70 is a fine lens. I always store my body with one on, for quick snapshots and such, and its possibilities are certainly greater than that, Awesome nikon kit lens.
Awesome info guys…thanks! I find my setup works well for close range still shots on my tripod in various lighting conditions, but it’s really hard to get good action shots unless there’s really good light. At the shutter speed I need to keep the image from blurring it’s like I can’t get enough light in during that time.
I use aperture priority whenever possible, but sometimes have to go to shutter priority for action shots.
I’ll read over that writeup when I have a minute.
the start of the race from my iphone 3gs
Ian I’m curious what your post processing…process is.
And why do you use an ND filter? Trying to allow more motion blur without overexposing when shooting outdoors?
I’m going to go down to 120-250 shutter speed on the pan shots next time to see if that gets enough light in for better shots. I had to +0.90 expose these during raw importing. I’m trying not to run more than 200 ISO to avoid grainy pics…
I got stuck goign to a wedding or else i woudl have been there!
My post processing can consist of enhancing the sky, to color correction, to cloning things out and masking things in, it all depends on what im doing, but not much cloning was done in these snapshot style pics, mostly just the enhancement of the sky, color correction using selective color in PS and shapening. The main reason I use a ND filter is for the sky. The camera meters for the subject and often over-exposes the sky, that is why the sky is so very vibrant in my pics, I have done some work to enhance it further but it would be impossible without the ND filter there in the first place. Also as you mentioned it cuts down light when panning. Those cars where moving pretty quick so I was 1/200 - 1/250 F 4 - 5 all weekend, but with the ND filter I can go much lower. Its sounds like you simply need to drop down to a lower shutter speed, its SUPER hit or miss and many of the shots will come out blurry, but its worth it for the effect, I’ll gather all my sources together and PM you with some info on PP’ing.
I guess I don’t understand how the ND filter causes the sky to be metered differently in comparison to the rest of your subject since ND filters are designed to lower all light input equally.
Or are you just saying that any time the sky is part of the subject the whole shot gets over-exposed? If so, couldn’t you lower the exposure on the camera or via raw editing during import?
I’m still a camera noob so go easy on me… I’m guessing that while ND filters are designed to lower all light input evenly, you’ve found that they don’t do that in practice.
Haha Np. Yes a regular ND filter will under-expose the whole image equally, but as you expose for the subject it will prevent the sky from blowing out white. And you make a very good point, it is very easy to replicate in post I just like to shoot with it and then enhance it in post to come up with what you see here:
Im sending you a basic tutorial I put together for BFS