Racing Related

 So now it's the workweek, and unfortunately I don't really have the time to set up the track during the week. That doesn't mean that I can't do some picture taking of slot cars.

It was a very nice day today, so I thought I'd use natural light and see how it looked on the 90D. I shot all the cars, and here are some samples:

I've been doing lots of tests in the past few evenings. I'll spare you the gory details of what was achieved, although I must say that I absolutely love the new camera and am so glad I bought it. Not a single regret. 

These pictures are something that was very difficult to do on the 500D. It just didn't have the capability to work in low light effectively. This is light from a single source; a window off to the right. I wanted to see if the 90D could handle the low light, and it performed perfectly. In fact, I haven't had a bad time since I got it.

These shots were taken with the 24mm Pancake lens. I'm finding it to be a fantastic general purpose daily shooter. The 10-18mm Ultra Wide angle is more artistic and fun, but it's nice to have options. I think they'll both be good for shooting slot cars. 

Okay, the next post will be about actual racing. My daughter's 5th birthday this weekend, so we're going to be running the cars for sure.

My Slot Car Photography and Video Gear

 I have been meaning to make a post showing the gear I use to take pictures for this blog and video for my YouTube videos. And now that I've expanded and upgraded, I thought I would go ahead and list up. It's really nothing special, and I tend to go for budget lenses.

Every picture on this blog up to this post has been shot on a Canon 500D [European name for the EOS Rebel T11]. It's a neat little DSLR, and makes a great starter camera. But you can only have a starter camera for so long before you grow out of it. And when my latest phone ends up taking higher resolution pictures than my 10 year old camera does, then it's time for an upgrade.

I like to think that I've intertwined slot car racing and photography into a single hobby for myself. 1:32 slot cars make a great model for pictures, and I never gent bored with taking them. 

The Canon 500D was a good camera, but I'm pretty sure I got some kind of short in the body that caused the flash to no longer fire, as well as kill my Speedlite, which was mounted to the camera at the time. The short also caused the camera to stop recognizing lenses and to struggle with autofocus, sometimes constantly searching but never locking.

Last week I bought a new camera body, the Canon 90D, effectively upgrading from a beginner DSLR to a Professional DSLR. It's loaded with features and high-end electronics, allowing for so much more control and clarity and precision. It's staggering. I play with the two cameras back to back and there's just no comparison. What took forever to do just to get passable results on the 500D is now much easier and much more controllable with the 90D. 

The 90D is a serious, feature-laden camera, used by professionals all over the world. Does that make me a professional? No. I have been, however, going through tests, especially comparing the two cameras, and have not come across one thing that has made me think this camera isn't right for me. I've been needing something like this, as much as someone could need a piece of gear, I guess, and I'm thrilled to finally have it. 

Not long after I bought the body, I bought a lens that I was also considering buying but thought I couldn't afford it. Turns out I could, so I went for it. It's a Canon EOS 10-18mm Ultra Wide lens. It's a lot of fun, has a really sharp picture, and can shoot up close with great results. It's fits nicely with my other lenses, as I now have something that goes wider than 18mm. That's exactly as far as I wanted to go with a wide angle lens. It'll be great for skateboarding videos and any other close action stuff, as well as interior footage, live music, etc. 

I expect it's going to take some time before I have the hang of this camera and lens. I'm going to keep testing and trying things. 

So here's a list of my stuff. It'll grow over time.

Cameras

Canon 500D [EOS Rebel T1I]

and now....

Canon 90D 

Lenses

Canon EFS 24mm Pancake Prime

Canon EF 50mm Nifty Fifty

Canon EFS 18-55mm

Canon EFS 55-250mm zoom

and now....

Canon EFS 10-18mm wide angle

Slik F740 Tripod

Taken with the EFS 55-250 on the 500D.

My plan was to upgrade my camera housing to something more current. There's a lot of things the 500D can't do, and it's time for me to move to the next step up. I use my gear enough to justify it, so I'm not worrying about shelling out the dough. 

I picked up a housing that's the latest and best thing out there for the price, and should not only improve the quality of the pictures I take, but should also do quite a few things on the video side that I need to do. 

The 90D does everything that I wish my 500D did, and in a much better way. This is a massive upgrade, and I'm super happy to have finally done it. I looked at the 80D and 70D as well, thinking about upgrading and saving money, but I couldn't get around the 90D and all the great features it has. Things that I can use right now. Yes, this is a professional camera. It is a very impressive piece of kit.

I also got a new lens to go with it, although I bought it a few days later. It's the 10-18mm wide angle. It's got a lot of curve in it, but it's a lot of fun. 

Shot with the 90D straight to jpeg. No editing only cropped. 90D with the 24mm Pancake.

I shoot mostly in Aperture Priority mode, which is the one controlling depth of field, or how blurry the background is. It's my favorite way to shoot, because you can work that in with your subject and single them out of the shot. The end result usually has a lot of "pop". 

The differences in sensor, focus and processing between the 500D and the 90D are practically incomparable. The gap is so stunning. The 90D has the eyes of a hawk, finding and focusing faster than YOU can, and certainly faster than the 500D can.

I've been looking at a lot of slot car videos over the years, and what has always bothered me is how difficult it is to pick up the action on a track with a camera. It seems there's this tendency for people to set a camera up in the corner and get an overview of the track and participants, rather than to focus on the action with closer footage. And overhead footage doesn't help much, as that just tends to make everything way too small and impersonal. There has to be another way, and I've been thinking about it. I think some things need to be addressed and worked out before it's possible to see good video of good slot car racing. I'm going to work on this with the new gear. I have ideas, and I'm looking forward to trying them. 

So expect lots of pictures, as well as a host of YouTube content. The 90D is going to make it so much easier to do slot car videos. I spent the day today testing the audio section of the camera. I tried 5 microphones, running either direct or through my mixer and into the camera, and I think I found the perfect combination for YouTube videos. I still have more testing to do, but once I'm in a good place I'll start putting out content. Shouldn't be too long. I've done some test videos and they've felt good so far. The further I get into the tech of this camera, the better the results. 

On the videos I've been doing, they've been mostly a straight shot of the car. I did that because I had to. The 500D didn't have anything remotely resembling autofocus for video, so I had to block a shot and stay there. Now that I don't have to do that, I can be in the shot as well, so now I'm rethinking my video surface and what happens there. I need to stay near the mixer for the time being, so I might start shooting video at my desk. But once I get a long enough mic cable, I'll be able to move to another place here, maybe the coffee table. It has a good size, is relatively mobile and I can easily put lights up. The desk is a little tricky because it's built for audio and not for video, so there's not much space there to put stuff like tripods and lights. But I'm still working on it, and so far I'm very happy with what's happening.

I forgot to mention: sometimes I use my iPhone for video, but not very often for pictures. I also have this cool little doohickey that you can clip to you phone that goes over the camera lens and adds a fisheye. Kinda fun:

So the experimentation continues. Expect things to be a little chippy around here until I have a better hang of the camera. I'm going to take a million pictures, though, and keep practicing. Kinda one of the reasons this blog exists, anyway.