Slot car photography

[gregj1763]

Hi just after a bit of advice.
Next Monday night I have been invited to a 1/32 scale slot car meeting, just a private fortnightly event between about 8-9 people.
It is held in this guy's garage and I have seen a few photo's of the track he has built, fair to say it's pretty impressive, 4 lanes, pits, grandstand with miniature spectators.
Obviously this guy has way too much time on his hands but it is seriously impressive.
I have been asked to take some photo's and was wondering if anyone here has come up against this sort of thing.
Lighting looks pretty good from the photo's I saw, big florescent lighting above, I have several flash units which can all be synced off camera if needed.
My camera will be a Sony A99 FF and as it's in a garage with several other people around I don't expect there to be a lot of room to move so I thought either my Sony 28-75 f/2.8 or Sigma 35mm f/1.4 for the lenses.
Shutter speed I imagine would have to be fairly fast, I don't think my panning skills would be up to the task, these little cars are super fast and I will need to be shooting at track level to make it look realistic. Apparently they can reduce the power going to the track to slow the cars so this may help me to get a few good shots
Anyway if anyone has some advice I'm all ears.
Cheers, Greg

[deetheturk]

Take lots of beer mate!

[gregj1763]

Take lots of beer mate!

That goes without saying David

[Manfred M]

If you have the space, take a tripod and set it up to get the view you want. Get them to slow things down and shoot in burst mode to get some captures.

If you are shooting a combination of flash / ambient (fluorescent(?)) lighting and you have correction gels (green - CTG / colour temperature green) for your flash (one of my Speedlights came with these), use them to correct for the mixed lighting. I'd definitely bracket my shutter speed and aperture to see what works best and would be tempted to drag the shutter on flash shots (if the Sony can give you front curtain / rear curtain synch), try both) to get a blur / frozen type shot.

[gregj1763]

Thanks Manfred, will definitely be taking a tripod along, have the gels. I thought I would start with the 28-75mm @ f/5.6 & 1/250th and if I have the room set up a flash above the cars to mimic sunlight and perhaps one low set on low power to highlight the side of the car. No doubt there will be lots of adjustments but I'm looking forward to it, should be a lot of fun

[rpcrowe]

Always remember... You can stop a fast moving subject approaching or going away from the camera with a slower shutter speed than you would need for a subject traveling directly across your field of view.

Additionally, you can stop a subject that is further away from the camera with a slower shutter speed than one that is closer to the camera or one that is shot with a longer focal length lens...

Occasionally, using second curtain sync with slower shutter speeds can be effective when shooting subjects like cars...

[William W]

Hi just after a bit of advice. . . . a 1/32 scale slot car . . . Lighting looks pretty good from the photo's I saw, big florescent lighting above, I have several flash units which can all be synced off camera if needed.

Shutter speed I imagine would have to be fairly fast, I don't think my panning skills would be up to the task. . .

If you choose not to use panning then it would be best to make his garage lighting irrelevant.

Doing so, YOU control the lighting scenario and thus it becomes more a controlled shoot; I’d leave only one or two tubes at the edges of the room and remove all the others. That will be very ‘moody’ and 'racing at dusk' – if you need to sell the idea to your friend.

Controlling the Lighting means that you control the shoot and you will achieve many goals including, but not limited to:

> easier Shutter Speed control
> easier WB control
> easier to manoeuvre around the track
> easier and better paced planning of various the vantage points
> removal of downward lighting / shadows

If 'several flash units' means three (or more) then three flash units (maybe four) set dextrously should allow you to move all around the garage and shoot from many vantage points, to capture the action.

Shutter Speed does NOT need to be fast, set it at Flash Sync and let the flash's pulse stop the motion.

I'd leave the tripod at home, there is no need for a tripod the shooting scenario as I have described above: neither is there need to shoot at machine gun pace.

Shoot slightly wide, with the view to crop in post production.

I'd probably use a pre-focus point on the track for many shots and release the shutter as the cars traversed that point.

I'd set a manual WB = Flash (or WB = 5500°K) to make the PP workflow quicker. And there’d be no need to gel the flash in this scenario: gelling to DOMESTIC Fluorescent tubes can be painful, anyway.

I cannot envisage any great need to slow the cars down. If you want a much more controlled shot, then set the cars in position, stationary, before and/or after the racing.

If you want to get adventurous, you could play with slowing the Shutter Speed to a value that the ambient was about 4 Stops under the Flash, which should give you little Subject Motion Blur without much of a noticeable green cast from the ambient light; and if you try this then use rear curtain sync (second curtain sync) to accentuate the trailing Subject Motion Blur.

WW

[IzzieK]

I would like to add that you should use Shutter Priority on your shots here. Make sure you position yourself in a place where you can at least can shoot when the cars are turning so you get body and blur at the same time. I agree with pre-focusing as William advises...that way you can plan your settings and shoot with that setting. Also I do not know what camera you are using, but if you can check the histogram on your camera where you have the RGB and red, green and blue channels, if you are using a Nikon there is a minus button at the left side of your camera wherein you can check what channel has highlight clippings (blinkers/blinking). Then from there you can adjust your exposure compensation...either by adjusting your aperture or give more or less shutter speed...

[Stagecoach]

Greg, not a lot to offer here but I'm sure you have had a look at such image collections as the attached.........

https://www.google.com/search?q=Scal...ed=0CAcQ_AUoAg

Judging by the limited number of ones that stand out I suspect you have a challenge

[gregj1763]

Thanks for all the very helpful comments everyone.
As this looks like it maybe an ongoing thing I will post the results next week for some C&C and note down how I went about the images.
I'm going to try and setup my shots from on a corner to get them coming, passing and going to try a variety of settings to see what I can achieve.
Should be an interesting exercise.
Cheers, Greg

This is a photo of the track that just got sent to me , not sure how much room there will be to get a good position. Just have to see how it goes.

[William W]

. . . Next Monday night . . .

How did you go?

[gregj1763]

How did you go?

It was a real challenge William. Because Sony uses the on camera flash to trigger the off camera flash, the slight lag was enough to make it near impossible to get a decent shot that way. In the end I used on camera flash ISO 100 f/8 and varied the shutter speed. Took about 200 shots and discarded probably half, the little buggers are fast and being so close to the track it was like trying to photograph a bullet. I had trouble getting any sense of movement in the images. Even panning at 1/60 I could get no background blur probably because the flash froze movement an the lack of distance between subject and background. I will post a couple of images tonight. Thanks for your interest

[gregj1763]

Ok here is a before and after, this shot was at f/9 1/60 ss.
As you can see with the original there is no sense of movement in the image so a bit of PP work with the motion and spin blur tools has hopefully improved it.
Only just started editing the images tonight so there might be something better to show later.
Cheers, Greg

[Manfred M]

I assume that the ambient light was too low to give motion blur while dragging the shutter? This really looks like an ideal situation for rear curtain / 2nd shutter (I don't know what Sony call it) flash work.

[gregj1763]

I assume that the ambient light was too low to give motion blur while dragging the shutter? This really looks like an ideal situation for rear curtain / 2nd shutter (I don't know what Sony call it) flash work.

Light wasn't brilliant Manfed just two fluorescent light above the track. I'm going back next week to have another go. I'm going to up the ISO this time, should give me the exposure I need to be able to use what Sony call rear sync. It was good fun and a nice bunch of guys but it gets pretty intense, the stakes are high, they play for chocolate frogs .
Oh and I did have a go

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Greg,

I've shot model railways and find that the killer for realism is naff overhead lighting, but even worse is using on camera flash. I appreciate that realism isn't perhaps the main objective with slot cars, the road surface is hardly prototypical

The speeds, compared to a model locomotives, must be manic

Anyway, to hopefully add something useful to the thread; have you tried 'tracking' along with the cars, as an alternative to simply panning the camera from a fixed location?

I expect you have, but thought I'd mention it.

I think this is one I took by the tracking method.
Whereas in this one, it looks like I panned, aimed at the cab number (or even tender), with the result that the leading buffers have way too much blur.

Good luck with the re-shoot, Dave

[gregj1763]

I hadn't tried tracking Dave only panning but will give it a go on Monday night.
To give you an idea of the speeds the Mazda Le Mans car was lapping the track in 3.5 seconds.
When I started shooting that particular car I would only be able to get it every second lap.