I went to the autocross on Saturday held by the BMW Club of Texas (yeah, as long as you pay the fees, they allow any car to participate). They have one every month (well, for nine months of the year) and they’re usually at Mineral Wells airport.
An autocross, if you’re not aware, is a timed event around a course. The BMW club sets up orange cones early that morning (and they have new course each month). Typically, the runs last around 100 seconds; there are four in the morning and four more in the afternoon (all for $25).
Depening on who you talk to, the airport at Mineral Wells was either last used for WWII training or for helicopter training for the Korean War. In any case, the tarmac is no longer used for airplanes ;). So, there is some gravel here and there and the occasional tuft of grass growing through a crack in the pavement. But, it’s still very drivable.
Since getting my new camera, I was looking forward to getting some shots at the autocross. In particular, I wanted to try panning — following the action in order to blur the background while keeping the subject in focus (this is typically done by forcing the camera to use a lower shutter speed than it would normally select, to ensure the blurring).
I took 116 shots, of which I’ve posted 6 in the Gallery. Yeah, that may seem like an unusually low number, but this was mostly due to the continuous-shutter mode that I was making use of.
In high-speed continuous mode, the camera take three frames per second (while low-speed continous takes three frames over two seconds). And, the camera blanks the viewfinder LCD as soon as the shutter is depressed — so I’m able to frame the first shot in a series but I’m flying blind after that.
I took all my photos during an afternoon session while I was corner-working (people who are corner-working pick up any toppled cones and call in the 1-second penalty to the timing station via FRS radios). I was standing at the center-point of a hairpin turn and so I had to pivot quickly to follow the cars. Because of that, I ended up with quite a few “air balls” where the shot consisted only of pavement ;).
I set the camera on shutter-priority and locked the shutter at 1/250sec — my goal was to blur the background as I panned, while keeping the car in focus. And, that actually worked too well (the wheels were not fully blurred at that shutter speed) so I adjusted to 1/125sec after a few shots. You can see the difference in the Gallery — earlier shots are at 1/250sec while latter shots are at 1/125sec.