Photography: Night Races = Dark Track. Any Tips?

[rcTom]

Ok,

So the owner of a track wants me to come out again to there track, but this time there doing night races. Obviously they have lights there for the racers to see, but its not sufficient enough to take pictures.

Gear i have:
Studio strobes w/ battery power pack
Speed lights w/ external battery pack
Wireless triggers
Stands

Should i do On of Off camera lighting?
If off camera lighting, Where should i put my lights?

I certainly don't want to blind the racers, so i have to make sure i dont point it there way.

Any tips or ideas would be very appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom.

[rcTom]

So ive actually tried using off camera lighting before and wasnt to happy with the turn out.
Heres just a random picture i grabbed from the set. Its a little blurry but my main concern is the light. It just seems to boring to me

[mole2k]

I would try to get the lighting a bit softer, if you could mount them to a softbox it would stop the harsh shadows, also I would try to have them a bit higher and further back from the track so the light falloff isnt as dramatic.

I would use the studio strobes as they should be a fair bit more powerfull as the key light and have it pointing down at the track shooting through a softbox (this would also help cut light spill so help with cutting down distractions)

Then I would place one of the speedlights low down on the opposite side of the track to give some nice low rake lighting and give the track some texture, also with the lights behind beind the cars you could get a nice rim light. I would probably put a snoot on it so the light doesnt illuminate the track closest to the speedlight.

Both these could be pointed away from the drivers so the only flash they see is off the actually track lighting up which shouldnt be that reflective. You could probably even play with some gels on the speedlight for effect.

[Lee]

I think this would really distract drivers, the other week at the euros there was a guy taking photos and he had a few remote flashes dotted round the corner, when it went off you did notice it and it was very off putting, this was also in good daylight, if it was dark i would imagine it would be a lot worse.

[jimmy]

It was Christophe Boulain from France that was taking flash photos in direct sunlight at the Euros. He got some really interesting photos using two off-camera canon flashes running on whatever infrared trigger the Canon system used I'm not sure.

I took some off-camera stuff to the neo09 race but never used it - I just felt it would be too off-putting to the drivers. I didn't have any snoots or anything and as long as the driver isn't able to see the direct flash it might be OK at least for practice / warmup - there are worse distractions on the race track like other cars for example.

It's definitely something I'd like to see more of but I'm not sure I'll be using it at the race track just yet - I'll wait to see how you's guys photos come out before I risk the wrath of racers!

[mole2k]

My idea to use the snoots and lightboxes would completely enclosethe light source meaning all the drivers saw was the track getting that bit brighter they wouldnt get to see any white surfaces to reflect the light.

Personally I dont really like flashes going off when driving which is why I thought quite alot about how to set it up to be as non-intrusive as possible. Playing with flash settings would be the main thing so the flashes arnt firing at full power the entire time.

The only other alternative is get hold of an f1.2 lens and a camera that has good noise reduction at very high iso's.