Porsche 911 cornering

I was recently on a magazine shoot with this stunning restored 1973 Porsche 911 Targa in the home counties around London.It’s often difficult to find decent driving roads to shoot the necessary action shots required for a full feature shoot in the South East so it was a great to find this open corner on a common just a few miles from the owner’s home.

This sequence shows how the car progresses through the corner.I use my Canon EOS 5DSR set to high speed motor-drive mode for cornering but only shoot in short bursts of 4-6 frames as the files are large and buffering occurs. The shot above shows the approach to the corner which was a full 90 degree bend.

The idea of a cornering shot if to show the handling capabilities of the car and the critical point where this is best demonstrated is when the car changes direction from coming towards you in the frame to crossing the viewfinder. The frame above with this head on view is not quite there.

Without panning you’ll need a shutter speed of 1/500th second or more to freeze the car.The faster the speed of the car the faster you’ll need to set your shutter speed, up to about 1/1250th second when the car will be frozen and look like it’s parked on the corner if you are not careful.This was a fairly slow corner so I shot it at 1/640th second which at 200ASA on a cloudy day gave me an aperture of F5.6 on my 70-300mm lens. The frame above here is nearly there.

You will need a good driver to get the best out of a cornering shot. We didn’t want tail hanging out …loss of grip doesn’t show handling and the road wasn’t suitable here. Ideally you’ll want to get a low perspective and be able to see all four wheels. The shot above is usable but improving…..

Porsche corner-1
Porsche corner final

…to this frame which shows the front inner wheel almost lifting and a 3/4 view of the car pin sharp with with the tyres blurred.