Pirates on Parade

[AshWeb]

I went along to Poole Pirates speedway earlier this week - haven't been to speedway for years (Tommy Knudsen was still riding for those in the know) and fell in love with the sport all over again. Incredibly brave and skilful riders with good, close racing and I was left wondering why I ever stopped going.

Took some shots which could be better I think; next time I'll try to zoom in closer and pan a bit more rather than relying on cropping and try using shutter priority rather than aperture priority.  Would there be any advantage to be had from shooting in RAW mode or pushing up the quality setting from normal to high?

All comments greatly appreciated.

[fuzzyedges]

shooting in RAW has the advantage of the fact that what you get is with limited alteration by the camera. This leaves you, with the appropriate software, the ability to bring everything back to how you want it to be, with the exception of focus which really has to be spot on and exposure which has to be within a window (really  over exposed kills detail whilst really under exposed introduces noise to get the details back ) 

Whilst both good action shots they do suffer from being a tad unsharp No2 better than No1 as it has introduced more motion blur on the front wheel, probably with a lower shutter speed but this in turn has left the outlines of the rider slightly fuzzy but you are getting there, especially as you enjoy the sport which means you will know where the best spots are to stand and anticipate the riders moves Look forward to seeing more action shots 

So as you say picking shutter speed as a prioity on your camera will allow you to control the amount of motion you want in the image 
Panning will keep the subject sharp with background blurred 
The more image  that is in the frame means less cropping and more pixels to keep the image looking fresh, It is always better to try and compose the image in the camera then you have loads to play with when its in the computer 

Happy speedway days go for it Ash 

[colinb]

 pushing up the quality setting from normal to high

All comments greatly appreciated.

Always - always keep your camera on the highest possible quality setting. I have never seen (or heard of)  a reason for buying a camera with X amount of pixels and not using All those you have paid for. 

Shooting in Raw - always good but you do still need to get the basics right and I don't think shooting in raw would make a lot of difference here. If you don't already use it Nikon ViewNX2 is free and very good as a basic raw converter.

I'm assuming you are still shooting with the Nikon 3200?  Your camera will 'hold' different settings for aperture and shutter and I often set up basic settings at home to give a start then adjust depending light etc. Remember with sport like this they do go around and around so experiment, don't just stick with one setting unless you know it works.

4.edit

[AshWeb]

Thanks for taking the time to comment guys.  Still using the 3200 Colin - Plenty of things to try and hopefully better shots to come.

I think the best approach might be to be a bit more selective about which shots to take instead of trying to catch everything. This is how I got shot two; I saw him circulating on his own and was able to zoom in better with the lens and my dodgy panning skills weren't too bad. Can only get better with practice...