Those are some GREAT pics. Can you describe your settings more Christian? I'd like to try my hand at these kinds of shots.
Sure thing.
First of all you need a great position and location from which to shoot a steady flow of passing cars. A zoom or telephoto lens is very useful (especially if you're standing farther away).
Camera settings are quite simple. Turn your focus to AF-C (continuous focus), set focus points to dynamic and turn VR (stabilization) on your lens off if it has it. You might also want to change the shooting method to continuous (I used the slow function which on the D3s is about 9 photos per second). How many focus points does your camera have? My Nikon D3s has 51 focus points and I set the camera to utilize all 51 focus points @ broad spectrum which means when I focus on a car the camera will devote several focus points to the car thus ensuring sharpness on several spots of the car. Lastly, I used the "S" (shutter priority) function where you set the shutter speed manually and the camera selects the best lens. I used a shutter speed of 1/30s for most of these shots, but 1/40s and 1/50s might be good speeds to begin at to get you warmed up. All of these shutter speeds should give you a blurry background and a sharp image.
Here's an example of a sharp image. Is that you in the Porsche?
Other settings you might have to influence depending on lighting conditions are ISO and exposure correction values. For these shots I set my ISO to 50 during the daylight and up to 320 / 500 when it got darker.
The hard part is matching your panning speed to the speed of the car. Images that are blurry mean I screwed up whereas an image where everything is sharp is perfectly executed in terms of panning. I find that I get the best results when I remain calm and breathe easily and during the panning movements. I also just turn my upper body. Plant your legs firm and stable on the ground and just turn with the car with your upper body. During the panning move you need to try to keep the camera and lens on an imaginary straight line with the car you're panning with. Some slight up or down movement will result in blurry pictures.
It's a good idea to focus on the car from father away and hold your snap button while doing it. If you're camera is set to AF-C then the camera will continually adjust the focus and sharpness of the car as it comes nearer to you.
It takes some practice but eventually you'll get the hang of it. And then you can even take pictures at 1/25s or lower! I've gotten a few great shots at 1/25s but 1/20s and 1/15s are really, really, really hard to master but when you do the results are just pure awesomeness!
Hope this helps!
