you guys are discussing pixel perfect sharpness and postprocessing, but i was complaining about my camera/lens focusing 50 meters from the object of interest. it's been always doing that, but it started to really get on my nerves, because it's a rule - you have a sequence of 5 photos, 1 of them captures the best action (wheel in air, lots of dust etc.) and THAT ONE photo is always the blurry one! it's so frustrating. but i guess im just demanding too much from lowend camera like 350D

i didn't try it yet, i'd imagine it would be quite hard to use on moving objects + sequences...

and not sure if you are talking about this photo, but if yes - thats special rally pasta - put everything you find in - ham, cheese, sausage, more cheese, tuna fish etc. tasted interesting

Quote from majod :

great sharp photos and if you want to reach the top edge of racing photo awesomeness, try putting cars somewhere else than to the middle of each picture...different compositions and may i ask which 70-200 lens did you use?

impossible with the shitty focusing my camera/lens offer. if i choose any other than the middle focusing point, it doesnt work. with only the middle one, it sometimes manages to focus properly - of course it never works at the best moment though (attached example - rautenbach nearly going off).

im using prime canon 200/2.8 L, which is why the car is cropped in the attached photo..

Rally Poland
http://rallyphotos.cz/photos/wrcpoland09/

rally http://rallyphotos.cz/photos/hustopece09/

its a mountain called Knehyne and the shot was taken from here looking north

just a panorama from weekend
http://don.vn.cz/temp/photos/knehyna.jpg

Quote from spankmeyer :

All you need is some Don-esque PP!

(I'll pull these down immediately if you want.)

hey, use your own style

Quote from james12s :

wow that looks great, what camera do you use? has it got a 12 min exposure setting or do you use BULB mode

EOS 350D and i use BULB

Quote from (SaM) :

Amazing lighting Don! Did you use a camera mounted flash or umbrella?
Btw, exposures up to 200s? You must have alot of patience!

No, I used a small LED flashlight and lit the car "manually". I tell you it was quite scary being alone in the fields in the middle of night and just waiting when somebody comes to kill you

Quote from mrodgers :

Awesome work on those Don. Did you have a flash unit inside the vehicle? I love how you can see the interior lit up on the headliner. Fantastic exposure work on the background and flash work on the car.

No, the interior was lit by the light coming from radio + I lit it with the flashlight a bit.

@Rich^uk, the first photo i did was about 12 minutes long exposure and it turned out like a photo taken at sunset - even though it was taken in the middle of the night (attachment)

Quote from zeugnimod :

Did the tractor come?

dunno, they would have to wait for the stage to end anyway and we left before that, when the rain got uber strong...

back to rally!
http://rallyphotos.cz/photos/vysocina09/

and my advice would be buy canon

no, seriously - i would be worried to go the Pentax/Sony/Olympus way - why? because I dont know any "pro" who shoots with either of these. All "pros" (and im talking mainly about rally photographers here) tend to use either Canon or Nikon. Plus I'm perfectly happy with my Canon and have no reason to swap.

And attached is my favourite image (hint: white lens = canon)

Quote from Migz :

Those are some awesome photos
I know this is a bit of a strange thing to ask, but any chance i could get this http://don.vn.cz/photos/powerrangers09/10.jpg
photo slightly bigger to go on my wallpaper?
Its alrighty for you to say no though.

sure

i want rally
http://don.vn.cz/photos/somesmallkid/

color profiles have always been too difficult for me to understand. I`ll just stick with what i know and works for me

anyway, here are few photos of toyota celica
http://don.vn.cz/photos/celica/

black car + direct "sharp" sun = hell for photographing...and i dont like the post processing on few photos there, but i realised it after it was done...

since you mentioned the RAW/Lightroom problem, here is another one I'm having:

When I import my RAWs to Lightroom (shot in sRGB, Lightroom set to work in sRGB), the reds are so wrong, they are more like orange. I heard it doesn't happen in other RAW processing programs, so perhaps the ACR in Lightroom is wrong?

http://don.vn.cz/temp/repo/raw_vs_jpg/raw_vs_jpg_1.jpg
http://don.vn.cz/temp/repo/raw_vs_jpg/raw_vs_jpg_2.jpg
(comparsion of JPG as came from camera VS. untouched raw, just converted to jpg)

I tried searching about this problem without any result... Nowadays it doesn't really bug me, since I know how to fix it, but from the beginning it was quite frustrating - I was scared to shoot ONLY to RAW, because I knew I couldn't get the colors right later.

in

Quote from Blackout :

That dusty Nikon stopped me, poor camera.

it was camera of the guy i was there with. mine was similar - but my sigma lens (70-300) didnt survive these conditions, the autofocus stopped working :/