Focus on Action shots

L

lawrenceingram

Active member
Ok,

I'm not sure what to search for in this forum on this one.

I'm trying to think how I could maintain an accurate focus on a vehicle moving quickly towards, then past me. I can get an accurate focus by following some tips I found in these forums, but it would be impossible to do while panning.

Is there a tool that would let me set my focus at the starting point and ending point, then interpolate it automatically as I pan? Or should I just try the autofocus for shots like this? I read an article about the Verizoom Stealth, but I'm not sure that would be able to do this. Any thoughts?
 
Ideally you'd get an assistant to pull focus for you on a separate focus controller like the Bebob Foxi.

One thing you can do is to select a F-stop on your lens that gives you a deep depth of field so that focus doesn't become so critical. If you are filming fast-moving vehicles, you probably are doing this on a sunny day and have plenty of light to work with, so I would work on finding a good combination of aperture and shutter speed that give you both deep DOF and a fast-enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur. If at that point you still have light you need to get rid of, kick in the ND filter.
 
Yeah, that was my problem. I'll be shooting a drag strip at night. It's just something I wanted to try out. I'm afraid the lighting may not be the best. So what concerned me was that I would need to have an F-stop with a more narrow depth of field as I try to let in more light. But I can probably get someone to help me out for a night. I'll check out the Bebob Foxi.

Thanks,
 
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