Here's four of my best from the rain-soaked and howling winded British Drift Championship, the opening round at Teesside Autodrome.
Some of them are of quite low quality, sorry for that. The event started at 6PM so it was nearly dark and near the end it was too dark and too wet to take more than one picture (the dark one you see above).
If your half way through the competition and you tap the rear of someone's car and your bulb goes, you don't really matter. Most people carry on even if they lose a front bumper!
We saw an old Ford Sierra Cosworth on the back of a trailer that had been in an accident, the front bumper was gone and the front right tyre was torn off the rim. I bet if the tire was fine he would have been competiting.
Another reason why they don't fix small stuff, once they get out of the car to fix something the rules say they've got a max of 5 minutes to fix it or they're DQ'd. The top qualifyer in the Amatuer class broke his handbrake after his first final's run, so he had to get out and fix it in the rain.
I took about 65 pictures that day and those 4 are about the best ones. Trying to hand hold a 1/30 exposure in strong winds and rain is quite a challenge.
Indeed, without stand it is pita to take any good shots in low light conditions, 1 second shutter speed was used in one of my earlier shots in thread, it came out bit unfocused, but surprisingly good, but I was leaning against a wall with my back so that did help a lot
Just want to let you know that the first (non-car related) pictures from mcintyrej are edited heavily in Photoshop - the raw pics from the camera look good, but they don't look as good as they do after you play with HDR.
I used a Canon 350D too, Me and Don also share the same long-range zoom lens - the Sigma 70-300 DG APO.
I love HDR when it includes old things, such as walls or old bits of metal..etc. I do think it looks a bit crap when you take 10 HDR pictures that would have probably looked better non-HDR.
But don't forget, not all HDR is the overly-dramatic style, just brightening up the shadows in a picture and leaving the highlights creates a HDR-effect and can sometimes look better that full HDR. To take an example - that picture of the cock' isn't HDR at all, that was taken straight from the camera, after a resize & sharpening.
With correct lighting, you can beat HDR. But being able to do HDR is far easier than trying to set up some lighting on an outdoor scene.
FYI, opanda exif viewer for Firefox. Install, then right click on any photo viewed in Firefox on the internet and you can get their exif info if it is still intact.
mcintyrej's exif info for the rooster photo......
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I was roaming around the field behind my house at dusk last week waiting for the sun to set. I turned around and found 10 deer staring at me. They all started running directly at me, then turned and ran past towards the woods. Unfortunately, I was set up for the sky and didn't have time to change things since my ISO setting is stuck in a menu somewhere instead of a dial on the camera.
But, this was the first time I attempted to pan something as it went by. I got lucky with the centering of the shot. Just wish I could have used a MUCH faster shutter speed to get the deer sharp.