Shooting cars at night - help!

[jonathan_ryan]

Does anybody have experience of shooting night time car rallies? I've been asked to step in on one in a couple of days as their regular guy can't make it. Although I have experience of shooting motor sports I've never shot one at night.

I shoot with a Nikon D100 and have 2 SB28DXs that I can use. What's the most effective way to use these to kick out as much light as possoble without blinding the drivers? I'd anticipate using a 200 - 300ish mm lens.

Obviously I could hire more light but I don't have much experience of using it on location and want to keep things as simple as possible.

[GJ_Smith]

High ISO and short focal lengths.

You should go and practcie with a friend where you can replicated what you will be doing. It's hard to help with such limited info.

Try posting this in the sports thread.

[Gregg_Obst]

How close to the action do you anticipate being allowed to be ? I shoot motorsports as well, mostly Sprint Cars, Midgets and Micro Sprints. 95% of our races are at night under very dusty conditions. Picture a brown snowstorm with 800 HP Sprint Cars flying past you within twenty feet at 120 MPH and you get a pretty good idea of what we go through.

You didn't mention how fast the glass is you have but with a 200-300 mm focal length you better have some serious power behind your flash to make a difference if the lens isn't at least an F2.8. I have two D100s with a SB80DX, SB800 and a big Sunpak 622 with zoom head. If I'm shooting my F2.8 200mm lens at night, the sunpak does very well. The SB800 does well also but I've only shot that combination (SB800/F 2.8 200mm) indoors at winter time Micro Sprint races held on closed hockey arenas.

If you're looking to shoot a 200-300 lens at, say F 3.5 or greater, then you really need to look into something bigger than a SB28DX unless you plan on shooting at 1600 ISO. I wouldn't recommend that because of the noise at that level. Especially with night photos of cars at speed.

[jonathan_ryan]

Thanks - I was planning to use the 200mm for safety. It's a 2.8 and the SB28 is supposed to be able to give me about 60 feet of coverage at ISO800. I had toyed with the diea o ISO1600 but I'll take what you say about the noise seriously and stick to 400/800.

However, I've spoken to the organiser and they are happy for me to get as close as I like (he suggested a 20mm lens!) so it looks like light might not be a problem (avaoiding be hit - not that's a problem [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]).

I should have said earlier this is an amateur rally taking place on public roads. Many of the sections are limited to 30mph. Based on the weather in the UK in the last couple of days I won't be shooting dust storms - more like big water splashes if I'm lucky.