Canon "cases" and autofocus for motorsport

[medius]

I recently got a 7Dmk2 as replacement for a 600D, and before I use it in anger, can anyone who uses the AF "cases" let me know which ones work in which situations when at a track? Does one work better for panning as cars go by, compared to another being better for zooming in on action at an apex? Or does one case work all round for racing?

Its all pretty advanced compared to what I'm used to

[grantp]

I have no experience of the 7D2 and it may have some fancy racing speed features but my 1D3 and a number of other bodies I have considered often, in the small print, suggest that their "high speed panning" modes refer to runners and horse riders rather than anything faster.

So, my rule of thumb when I remember to apply it:

Head on at apex or close to that ... as fast as you can get with the light/need to freeze the action. Motion blur is not really desirable for the primary subject and the background will ony really blurred by the aperture and distance between subject and background.

For a fairly slow apex may 1/250th. A typical apex 1/800th is good. Something higher speed - 1/1000th or greater. Modify as at light or ISO competence allow.

For panning .... it depends. How slow can you go? How slow do you want to go.

Try the camera recipes and see what they give you.

If you are on the inside of a relatively constant radius bend the choice of shutter speed is all yours. Once your panning is working the only question is how blurred you want the wheels and the background to be.

A sort of 3/4 frontal shot pan on a bend will give you different result depending in shutter speed and distance to different parts of the subject. And, if using a tracking AF mode, where the AF first spots something it can focus on.

If you are using multiple AF points in a group I would guess that there could be some interesting decision making going on in camera.

That said one of the long term well know old school pro Motorsport Shooters I was chatting to a couple of years ago said he used 1/250th for all of his shots on a typical day in the UK and gave the impression that he mostly preferred manual focus.

I hired a 7D once some years back. An interesting device. The rental came with the battery grip. I found that it was easy to consume all of the available power in a day despite shooting with another camera alongside the 7D. I have no idea how the 7D2 would compare.

I did try the multiple focus option that it offered that seemed relevant to what I was trying to do. As I recall that was over 2 meetings on consecutive weekends. As the files did not seem to report the mode used it was difficult to make valid comparisons. I was never entirely convinced with the 7D at the time and a couple of weeks later was able to obtain a 1D3, hardly used and from someone well known to someone I have known for years. Even better it cost me quite a bit less than a 7D would have cost me at the time. Much less if one was to add the battery grip cost.

With the 1D3 I tend to just use a single focus point. Usually the centre point because it is more sensitive for AF purposes - but not always the centre. The 1D3 does not have the same complex options as the 7D or 7D2. You may find that most of your shooting doesn't need them either - but they will be useful in the right circumstances.

HTH.

[Woolley]

I've got the old 7DmkI which I've used occasionally for motorsport.

AI autofocus for something coming towards you (or away)
For panning I found better to pre-focus on the point where I was expecting to take the shot and then aim to hit the right spot.
I found it helpful to use the '1point + surrounding points' setup, if a single seater, try to focus on the helmet, so probably use the point above centre.

[David Stallard]

Hey fella, sorry for the late reply - as to your main question.

I have the 5dIII and the 1DX set up to case one (permanently for everything) with the following adjustments saved:
Tracking Sensitivity: -1
Accel./Decel. Tracking: +1
AF pt auto switching: +1

Back button focus is a no brainer - basically means you have cont AF as well as focus / recompose - one shot permanently available.

Hope that helps

.DAVID.

PS: don't get on here as much as I would like to so feel free to message me if I can help I will