By Ken Hubbard
It's amazing what happens when you put supposedly mature adults behind the wheel of a Go Cart. The youngster that is still in there somewhere comes out and all they want to do is go faster than the next guy!!! I had the pleasure of giving a technical field training for a local dealer sales staff in Northern California, and for the hands on workshop portion of it we spent time at the track. While one part of the staff put the petal to the metal racing the go carts around the course, the other half positioned themselves around the track, Tamron lenses in hand capturing images of their co-workers racing. It was fun to watch how the good friendships off the track soon turn to fierce racing competitors on the track back to laughing and joking about the fastest and slowest racers once they were done. I believe everyone had a great time and learned a ton about Tamron lenses and how well they perform. Below are two images I took that day.
The first image was taken with the Tamron SP AF10-24mm Di II lens, which is designed for the APS-C sized sensor cameras, I used it on a Nikon D7000. Since I was able to get very close to the racing barriers, which allowed the racers to get within 6 ft, I decided on this great wide angle lens. It allowed me to get some of the barrier in the foreground, the racers in the middle and the back wall with corporate logos on it all in the shot, I then decided to go with a very slow shutter speed of 1/25 second, I wanted it slow so when I panned the camera with the racer the background and foreground would have a motion blur to it, as well as blur in the wheels from their movement. If you use to fast of a shutter speed, everything will be too sharp and it will look like they are standing still on the race track. The motion blur background helps create the feeling of movement, just remember to pan along with the subject while firing the camera. As I said earlier I wanted the logos in the background, and that was to add contrast to the background creating a more effective blur. With multiple colors and both light and dark, you create a more noticeable blur than if it was a solid color background.
The second image was shot with Tamron’s new SP 70-300mm VC USD lens. The speed of this lenses new USD focusing motor really came in handy trying to keep up with the racers. Looking at the lines of the track and picking a spot where I may be able to get more than one racer in the image was important for the shot I was trying to create. I decided to zoom out to 270mm to get a bit of a tighter crop, but still trying to create a more dimensional image, I positioned myself to get a little of the barrier in the bottom of the frame, the nice S curve of the barrier in the top right hand corner, as well as a second racer in the background. The compression a telephoto lens creates make it look like the racer in the background is only feet away from the person in front, when in actuality she was about 30-40 feet away. Again going with a slower shutter speed of about 1/60 second to blur some of the movement.
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