Hi wutputt,
It is possible to get the whole car sharp even when you are shooting panning shots and normaly it has to be more easy (duable) with f/2.8 lenses.
First of all, when you use AF-S focussing you aim for a spot on the track and the moment the car passes by and comes into the sharp area you have to hit the shutter button, that's obvious. But the hardest part is that you have to take the pictures just on the moment when the whole car is sharp and there is no room for error here, not when it comes to panning shots. Everything has to be right; you have to pick up the speed of the car by following it through your viewfinder and you have to aim on a certain spot of the car and stick on on it eg: Front wheel. I think that the best thing you can do is just to wait a few milli secs longer when you see the front of the car becoming sharp before hitting the shutter button. My experience is that the front of the car will be sharp and that you have more chance of ending up with a nice sharp back of the car as well.
Another important thing is not to move or shake the lens the moment you hit the shutter button and that you track the car just a little bit longer even after the first click that the mirror makes. The picture you get is the result of what happened between the first and the second click of the mirror
It is must harder than that it sounds.
I do find it frustrating from time to time, if you look at the pictures in my previous post it is cristal clear to my why those back ends are much sharper than here. It's because those cars aren't driven that fast, that's the main reason. So, I probably get sharper back ends when I shoot those vln-cars with higher shutterspeeds. ANother very important thing is the exposure, the amount of light available. It was much brighter the week before which means you will end up with a higher exposure figure, big advantage
You can get this by changing the iso setting, start shooting on 400 / 500 / 600 ... . I made a print of the drifting M3 GTR I had shot during the 24 hours race. I shot that image on iso 500 and with a shutterspeed of 1/160. The dimensions of the poster are 75 cm x 50 cm and you don't see any grain at all.
Wutputt, I can go on and on for hours but let me end with this. Don't get fooled by the images of professional photographers. If you look at panning shots most of them won't be super sharp and lots of them will be taken on a slight higher shutterspeed than you see here. I almost shoot all my panning shots on 1/160 s, it seems to be perfect, especially when it comes to those touristenfahrten. But it's maybe a bit too low to get those super sharp results when shooting race cars. It is possible of coarse but not on a regular base. But when everything falls into place, you end up with a striking image.
Eventually, lots of panning shots only show one side of the car. I 'm not really fond of that, it's ok and they can be very good but then it's the mega blurry background that does the trick instead of the sharpness of the car and the rotating wheels. I love to shoot my panning shots so you can the front, the side and the back of the car. You get a nice sharp front with lots of detail in the frontgrill(s) and lights, you can also see the number that the car has and last but not least it is great when you can read the name(s) of the driver(s) glued on the rear window. All of this sharpness combined with a blurry background makes it a stunning shot.
I think you should take the AF-S focussing over the AF-C focussing mode when it comes to the D70. My experience is that the AF-C isn't that relaible, the AF-S is great. The AF-C on Nikon pro bodies is much better. I think it is a software issue, so updating your D70 to the D70s by downloading the latest firmware can be a good option here.
I hope you haven't fallen asleep after reading this
Cheers & keep on praticing those panning shots
Pictures vln-race @ the ring
Linear Mode
