Good morning, all!
I am absolutely gutted that I didn't know about this ride and shoot 😭 😭 😭 . I must have missed the announcement. I would just love to join but I'll be out most of the night Thursday doing some astro shooting and then going camping Friday night for more astro. Can we please try this again in future? Please 🙏🏼 ?
If I were going to give any advice I'd say to try to go with an aperture of f/11 or f/13 to start, with a shutter speed of at least 1/250th if you want to freeze some of the spraying sand. If you want really freeze the spraying sand a faster shutter speed will be better, but you'll need to make other adjustments to allow for the reduced light that a faster shutter brings. I would not go less than f/8 on the aperture, though, as you risk getting more of the foreground and background out of focus, which isn't what you want if you want to freeze the spraying sand. I'd rather bump up the ISO than open the f-stop, but how high you can go without getting noise will depend on your camera. As the sun rises rapidly though, that will be less of an issue. Also, be sure to keep your camera on high-speed shooting; the more frames you click of this fast driving action, the better the chances of getting something you love.
A cool thing to try would be panning; it's a little tricky but the results can be really cool. The car itself will be in focus and everything else will be blurred. This isn't the same as just having a wide open aperture (f/2.8 or wider), which would just 'unfocus' the background; this is like an action shot and with sand blurring from its own movement and your movement of the camera. This is a handheld action where you use a slow shutter (1/60 or 1/30) and a smaller aperture (f/16 or f/20-ish) and 'pan' your body with the moving object (the car) which blurs the background (the spraying sand). The smaller aperture will cut the light you'll get from having the shutter open longer. Usually that results in clearer backgrounds, but in this case it won't' since you'll be panning the camera. The ISO can easily be adjusted, but again with the early rise of the harsh sunlight, it won't be as much of an issue. Here's a nice article from Canon on how to do it, and I really think this could be a fun thing to try out in the sands.
Again, please please 🙏🏼 can we try to schedule this again soon? I'm just so sad to be missing it 💔.
Best of luck everyone; looking forward to seeing the shots!
Sam