RC Car Racing in Modesto

This last weekend I went RC Car Racing in Modesto at Modesto RC Raceway located at Funworks in Modesto. This was my first RC race ever and I feel like I did pretty well. This was also my first time on the track with other rc cars. I placed third out of 6 in the Novice class. With some practice, which will lead to more consistant driving, I should be able to do better next time.

It was fun and challenging to take pictures of fast moving RC Cars. RC Car Photography is different than taking pictures of people or full size cars. RC Cars move fast and are hard to focus on. I only had a 24mm lens on me at the time so I made due by getting as close to the action as I could with out putting myself in danger or blocking the line of site of the drivers. Next time I will bring my 70-200mm lens and a video tripod as well.

To freeze the action of these fast moving trucks and buggies I set my shutter speed to 1/1250th of a second. Higher shutter speeds help prevent blur that comes with fast moving objects. For most of the day I was shooting at an f-stop of 5.6 which gave me a decent depth of field considering my lens was the Canon 24mm 1.4L. My ISO was at 250. If I was shooting with the Canon 70-200mm 2.8 I probably would have increased my f-stop up to around 8 and increased my ISO accordingly so I could stay at the 1/1250th shutter speed. I did notice that for the modified buggy class, which was the fastest class, I probably could have increased my shutter speed to 1/1500th or higher to do a better job of freezing the car in the frame and preventing any blur as it moved through my frame.

All-in-all it was a fun day. I felt accomplished because of my 3rd place finish, nothing on my truck broke (just wore out a bearing in the rear end) and I was home in time to go to the gym.

If you are interested in RC Car Racing in Modesto, I suggest you check out Modesto RC Raceway. Racing usually takes place on Saturdays starting at 10am. Gates open and practice starts around 8am. They also have practice nights on Thursday evenings. You can get the latest information on race days and practice on the Modesto RC Raceway website: http://modestorc.com – Your best bet is to click on the Forum.

The first 2 photos are my truck. My paint job was nothing special. This was suppose to be my basher body that I was going to use to practice driving the track. I didn’t have time to paint anything nice and will most likely have my friend who is an airbrush artist paint a few bodies for me.