| Joined: | Thu Apr 19th, 2012 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 4431 |
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I have been able to renew my motorsport photography thanks to my son's new job with a local race team, Coastal Racing who race a team of Mini's in the national Mini Challenge series. I am able to tag along.
I am visiting race tracks which I have never been to before, learning where the best vantage points are etc. One of the problems I am encountering is catch fencing, it seems to be everywhere I want to be. It's impractical to get permits to access the press areas, so I have to make the best of what I can.
I took some photo's at Donington through the catch fencing of the chicane before the start finish straight. Some potential for interesting images with most at least lifting a wheel and several going well onto two wheels. The fencing spoils the images, even using my Nikkor 300mm f2.8 fairly wide. It's difficult to do much in post processing to remove it.
This was taken at the chicane, the effect is less noticeable than the second image but it's there, the right hand side of the car has lower definition than the left. I was also fairly close to the fence, but I dumped 80% of the otherwise quite usable images because of the fence issue.
A fairly strong example of the effect of taking photographs through the catch fencing.
Last night I read a tip which may solve the issue... By spraying the fence with black paint it's less conspicuous and more practical than discretely cutting a hole in the fence, which isn't really a solution with a 300 f2.8 to poke through.
Anybody got a better solution? Mostly the fences are over 12 feet high and very robust with girder posts and heavy bracing. Like the one in the background.
I am surprised the fence is so obvious in the second image. There seems a lot of dof on that image, was the aperture stopped down?
I've shot through many fences without a lot of issues by simply following the known strategy.....max aperture, long focal length, lens touching wire, sun behind the camera.
Of course the diameter of the lens relative to the mesh size will play a part. You might find using a smaller diameter zoom lens like the superb consumer 70-300 lens, might be better than the big prime ...despite it having smaller max aperture...especially if on a DX body.
I'm guessing you used the D3 with the 300? Situations like this MIGHT be the Achilles heel for pro equipment?
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Eric