http://www.oliverhiggins.com

This article is in response to me being asked about how I take photos of moving bikes. It is my own work and interpretation and do not for one minute take responsibility for how anybody uses this information.

Howto take pictures of Motorcycles for the non professional photographer
(Well at least the way i do it.)

What is needed?
Good camera, preferably a DSLR but a good compact camera will do provided it can be set manually and it can shoot in RAW
Photo-shop or equivalent that can process RAW (GIMP/UFRAW on Linux works well)
A basic understanding of the principals of photography. I will explain certain fundamentals but where possible i will link to relevant resources.
A moving motorcycle
A corner

Ok lets start by me firstly say “I am not a professional photographer in any shape or form”. I enjoy photography and the challenge it presents. Part of my enjoyment comes form the fact that it is challenging and part because i see the enjoyment other people get from my work. I only have to look around the ccsbr forum, facebook and myspace to see people proudly displaying my work of them on their own pride and joys. So i ask that you approach this article with an open mind and understand that I too am still learning and experiment each time i go out and take pictures.

Whilst this technique is not perfect it does yield some good results with the need of a $4k lens.

Gear
I use a Nikon D80 with a lens selection of 18-70mm (35mm format). Being that we are not on a race track you do not need a long telephoto lens to capture the bike. (However the longer the lens and the further you are from the subject the easier it is to track them). Any good DSLR or hybrid camera will work. Some compact may be ok provided you can adjust some of the settings manually.

Setup
First thing you need to do is set you camera to take pictures in RAW . Some cameras will allow you to set both RAW and JPG simultaneously.

Second set your camera to manual mode. This will vary depending on your camera but often it is “M” on the function dial. Please see your manual.

Third set your shutter speed to approximately 1/400 sec. This is fast enough to freeze most motion but pending your focal length and distance to the subject you my need to adjust. Faster shutter-closer the subject.

Fourth meter your subject. Now you will have no bike yet in your shot but you will have a generally idea as to how much light is currently available. Now here is the tricky bit, set your aperture so your light meter is underexposing the photo 1.5 to 2 EV. This means going to your largest f-stop and working up. Generally it will be about f5.6 to f8.

The question you are probably asking now is why are we underexposing the picture? Won’t it look bad? The answer is yes it will look bad under normal exposure. The RAW image holds a huge amount of information that is lost when you save it as a JPG (Not to mention noise compression). Using the RAW image we are able to get back nearly 2.0 EV of exposure thus bring our subject into normal. Not to mention that many bikes are colorful and often over expose the photo when they come into shot. More on this later. (HDR)

A note on ISO. Set you camera as low is it can go. This will depend on you sensor but try to go no higher then 400.

Focal plane

This part can be difficult and not always easy to control.

First find a corner. The best ones tend to be tight (left hand) bends that are going up hill. Most riders have confidence to lean when going up. The tight corner serves to purposes, one it slows the bike down to make it easier to track and get a cleaner shot. Second a leaning bike is much more interesting photo then one that is upright going along a straight stretch of road.

If you ride a bike you should understand the principle of the “line” of the corner. Find your vantage point that you want to take your photo from. Set your cameras lens to manual focus. Now find a point directly in line with you on the other side of the road. Focus on it. Now slow wind the focus back across the road and choose an approximate point on what line you think the motorcycle will take. This takes some practice and is till dependent on if the rider chooses to take the line you think he will. This is where the aforementioned under exposure will help compensate. The smaller the f-stop the more correction in your focal plane.

The Photo

So by now you should have your camera setup to take the picture. Get low to the ground. Not only does this add perspective to the photo it allows you a little more stability in the picture.

You may need to experiment with your focal length. I find it easier to back off a little and then crop the photo down later in photo-shop, but once again experiment with this to see if you can find something that you are comfortable with.

Now remember the line that you original focused on? This is where you want to take the picture. As the bike comes around the corner starting tracking it the moment you see it. As it passes you and you know where the focal line is click the shutter. If you have a camera that does multiple frames you can roll of some more as the bike goes past but you will often find only one will be focused correctly.

Now get ready for the next rider and hope that they are not to close to each other.

Review your shots.

Post processing

This is where things get interesting. Open Photo-shop or your equivalent program. Open the RAW file and the RAW processing dialog should open. The most important thing here is to find the exposure control. Most images will need to be brought up by 1 to 1.5 EV, but because you shot the image in RAW you can easily do this with out any degrading of the original image. The bike should be well exposed. Click OK and bring your image into your editor. For the purpose of this article i will not go into how to use Photo-shop etc but my basic post processing is;

Crop
Adjust Curves and or hue/saturation
Sharpen
Save