Panoramic shots of motorsport?

[G_Ilott]

An acquaintance of mine has an Xpan. When he was telling me about it, I wondered if anyone has ever applied the panoramic format to motorsport for unusual shots.

Have you, or do you know of any professional or amateur, that has experimented along these lines? I'm talking medium format rather than the APS compact format. Although, of course, the XPan is sort of like the APS solution in a way.

[MolsonBoy]

I was sent some panaramic images from the ChampCar run at Brands. I believe they were digital. When I get home I will post some.

I think the potential to create some very interesting images is there. An example I can think of would be in a tight hairpin turn on the inside. If all the race photographers God were in agreement to have cars at the turn with one right, one centre and one left.

There was a guy at the Vancouver Molson Indy that had a set up to take 360 degree digital images. Basically it was a glass tube place on top of the lens with a mirror in the shape of a cone. Pointy end towards the lens. He snaps the picture and a perfect 360 degree image. The only problem with it was the photographer was almost always in the picture and and was close up like a very wide angle lens. Kind of a novelity. SOme images made ther e way onto the CART web site.

[djb]

a french photographer named Jacques-Henri Lartigue used a wide ratio camera to some effect with motorsport shots in the teens or twenties. (he's the guy who took those shots of early race cars going by with the wheels distorted, leaning sort of)

thats the only guy that comes tomind, but I am sure that there have been others more recently.

true panaramic cameras (the ones with a swiveling lens) do not I believe use fast shutter speeds, but i could be wrong. i know the originals swung rather slowly, allowing for kid to be at one end of a group shot, run around the back of everyone and still be in the exposure at the other end of the line when the lens got around to there.

[KC]

There are several photographers that use the panaoramic cameras at the NASCAR events. It works particularly well when a warmup lap immage is taken of the whole field with the backdrop of the crowd. But, you have all the cars in one area and the crowd is pretty close as well.