Greymouth Street Races with Lumix S5 and 70-300mm

The Greymouth Motorbike Street Races is an annual event, run every Sunday of Labour Weekend (a public holiday weekend here in New Zealand), and is one of the few street race events still held anywhere in the world. As such, it draws a big crowd, and competitors from all over New Zealand.

It also happens to be a fantastic event to photograph. With motorbikes hurtling past you at up to 165kms an hour, often literally only at arms length, it will test the reflexes and autofocus speed of the most advanced camera systems.

I haven't photographed the event for several years - partly due to other commitments, and partly due to bad weather in previous years. I decided to go this year and try my luck with my S5, and my newly acquired Panasonic L 70-300mm f4.5-5.6. I haven't really shot with the 70-300mm since acquiring it a few month ago - and the Street Races would be the prefect test for it.

Greymouth Street Races 2026. Lumix S5 with L 70-300mm. f6.3 @ 1/2500th, ISO 400. 170mm

Whenever I'm shooting anything that is travelling so fast that if you blink you literally miss it, I don't use the cameras autofocusing system. Instead I go 'old school' and zone focus. I pick a point (usually the bend in the road) where I want to capture the action, and then I manual focus on that point. I set the camera on continuous shooting (the S5 captures 7fps in manual mode - which is plenty fast enough) and then fire off a burst of images when the bikes enter the zone of focus. Of the burst of 4 or five images, usually at least 2 or 3 of them are in sharp focus. At least that's the plan.

No.69 Daniel Bradley - 2016 Kawasaki ZX6R. f.8 @ 1/2000th, ISO 800. 300mm

Not a bad plan as it turns out. The S5 has two handy features to help when setting this sort of shot up. First, when you manual focus you can enable a magnification of the focus area to achieve critical focus - and second, whatever is in focus has 'focus peaking' (if you enable it) so that you can visually see what is in focus. Even travelling as quickly as they were, I could see the bikes glow red (I have my peaking set to red but you can choose other colours) when they came into the zone of focus. How cool is that!

An odd thing happened throughout the day while using this technique however. After a while, the manual focus would go 'out of focus' and I would have to refocus again. I actually found myself flicking the AF/MF switch on the lens and doing a quick autofocus and then flicking back to manual before the riders came around the course again. I can't for the life of me figure out why the manual focus would go out of focus when I wasn't anywhere near the focus ring? It's a mystery...

660 - Gary Graham, 2021 Aprillia RSV4. f8 @1/3200th, ISO 800. 300mm

With the occasional manual focus issue, I wasn't feeling as confident as I would like with the S5 and 70-300mm combination. This also wasn't helped by the fact that I photograph wearing my 'long distance' glasses so everything is nice and sharp through the viewfinder. But when I go to look at the back of the camera, it's all a bit of a blur! Consequently, shots don't look all that sharp to me in review. In fact they look down-right out of focus! This does not, I'm sure you'll agree, foster massive confidence in your images.

I choose, however, to trust the process - and the gear - that what looked in focus in the viewfinder (and glowed red) would indeed be in focus. And then I just had to let the quality of the lens do the rest. At the end of a very long days shooting (about 7 hours and 2500 images later), I can't say that I was all that confident that I had a card full of 'keepers'? And would the new lens perform?

778 Riley Foster & 399 James Carley - Supermoto. f7.1 @ 1/1600th, ISO 1000. 300mm

Okay, it performs.... (as you can see from the images in this post). In fact it performs astoundingly well! I was delighted when I had finished loading the images on to the computer and opened them in Adobe Bridge. The first few were slightly out of focus (heart dropped), and then 'bang' - tack sharp! And that was the tale of the next few hours editing the 2500+ photos. A sequence would start out slightly out of focus, and then bang, bang, bang - three tack-sharp images as the bikes moved through the zone.

I made sure not to shoot wide open (f5.6) at the full 300mm (never a lenses sharpest combination) to guarantee as much sharpness as I could eek out of the lens. And it didn't dissapoint.

Background separation at f8 and 300mm is still reasonable - and I tried to help myself by choosing as clean a background as I could when setting up in a position on the track.

31 - Ian Reed - 2016 BMW S1000RR. f7.1 @ 1/3200th, ISO 800. 200mm

Am I happy with the results? You betcha. Happier than a pig in mud! I've been shooting the Street Races for probably the last 20 or so years (on and off), and these results are probably the best (in terms of sharpness, colour, clarity) I've ever achieved.

Some will say that the Panasonic Lumix S5 isn't a sports camera. And to be fair, it probably isn't. Some will say that the 'cheap' L 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 isn't a motorsport lens. And again, maybe not. But does that mean you can't get amazing sports/action images with this combination? The proof, as they also say, is in the pudding.

How's my pudding? Delicious! 😋

TPP Corner, Greymouth Street Races 2026. f8 @ 1/3200th, ISO 1000. 77mm

Pre-focusing for action photography

Every year in the town where I live, they put on a motorcycle street race event. It's always over a long weekend (Labour Day here in NZ), and it's always a great day out. Especially if we get a warm spring day.

Fortunately, the weather Gods were smiling on the event this year, and the weather couldn't have been better. So I decided that I was going to attend this year and use the chance to get in a full day of photography - a very rare occasion nowadays. 

Catch me if you can. Sony A7iii with Sony G Master 100-400mm.  f/5.6 @ 1/2500, ISO 400

In my previous post I talked about scoring a bunch of Minolta lenses from a friend (thanks again Stew) to use for the event. Specifically the Minolta 100-400mm f/4.5-6.7 Apo and a Sigma 180mm f/3.5 macro. I was looking forward to using these on my also borrowed Sony a99.

I have shot this event several times over the years, with a lot of different gear, so I knew that lenses in the vicinity of 200mm would be about right if I wanted to get close to the action. In fact there are places around the track where you can get so close as to almost reach out and touch the riders as they hurtle past at 100mph. I kid you not! I, however, like to keep a slightly safer distance from the action as it unfolds. So the 100-400mm and even the 180mm macro were going to be about perfect for the whole day.

The observant among you (I'm sure that's everyone who reads this blog) will have noticed by now that the opening image in this post was not taken with the a99 in combination with the two lenses I've just discussed. It was taken with much newer gear that I also had a chance to 'play' with. More on that later.

Knee-scraping action. Sony a99 with Sigma 180mm macro. f/4 @ 1/1000th, ISO 200

It may, at first glance, seem unusual to take a macro lens to a motorsport event. Macro lenses are for close up photos of bugs and flowers - aren't they? Well yes, they are. But they can also be used as a 'normal' lens. And they also tend to be reasonably fast, and reasonably sharp. For a 180mm focal length, that's a pretty slick combination.

The one thing they maybe aren't, however, is extremely fast focusing. And neither is the 10 year old Sony a99. 6 FPS (frames per second) isn't what you would call blazingly fast. And its continuous autofocus isn't anything spectacular either. It's a fantastic landscape camera. But for fast sports action shooting - not so much.

But then again, I knew this wasn't going to be a problem. Because my favourite technique for shooting these extremely fast action sports is rather old-school. It's known as pre-focusing, and was used by all the sports photographers before this snazzy thing called autofocus tracking was invented. And it's pretty easy to do.

Bascially, just put your camera into manual focus (yes, I know, manual focusing is scary - but bear with me), 'pre-focus' on an area that you know your subject is going to move through, and then fire a burst of images as they move through the pre-focused zone. All in manual focus. Simple. And very effective.

All concentration. Sony a99 with Minolta 100-400mm Apo. f/6.3 @ 1/800th, ISO 640

There's really only one drawback using this method. You have to take a lot of images to make sure you get the sharp frame you are after. Unfortunately this dramatically increases the processing you need to go through afterwards. And I mean dramatically. For example, to get a decent 'hit rate' using this method, I took over 3500 images on the day. That's not a typo. 3500 images! And of that, around 80% are out of focus and will needed to be deleted. I'll probably end up throwing away 3000 images. But at least I'll be left with about 500 sharp ones.

Despite the tedious post-processing that this technique requires, I'm very happy with the results. If you don't have the latest and greatest gear, or a camera system that isn't optimised for fast action autofocusing, then this really should be your go-to technique.

Of course there is a better way. And it's not going to please the 'gear doesn't matter' brigade. Because for some types of photography (in fact for most types) the gear does matter. This was made abundantly clear to me later on in the afternoon.

Out in front. Sony A7iii with Sony G Master 100-400mm. f/5.6 @ 1/1600th, ISO 400

My mate Stewart turned up in the late afternoon to see how I was getting on. We chatted for a while, I told him that I was using the pro-focus technique, and he asked me if I would like to try using his Sony A7iii with Sony 100-400 G Master lens for a while?

Who am I to turn down an offer like that! So of course I said yes - thinking that I would fumble my way through, making a terrible hash of trying to follow and capture the action. OMG - was I wrong!

You can always hear the roar of the bikes approaching before you see them so you have some time to prepare. Stewart told me he had the camera set to focus tracking with a wide autofocus area, so all I needed to do was point and shoot. Yeah - right!

And yeah, he was right! As the first riders came screaming around the bend, I held the camera up to my eye, the focus points instantly locked onto the front rider, and they all lit up green. Click-click-click, the shutter fired in blazingly quick succession, and I had a series of tack-sharp images. All of them!

Need for Speed. Sony A7iii with Sony G Master 100-400mm. f/5.6 @ 1/2000th, ISO 400

I almost couldn't believe the speed and accuracy of the autofocus on the A7iii, paired with the Sony G Master 100-400mm teleophoto. It was mad, crazy, unbelievably fast. And the results were so much sharper than anything I got with the Minolta 100-400mm or Sigma 180mm. Period! I've never used anything quite this fast and accurate before. It was scary good - and exhilarating - I'm not gonna lie. 

It also happens to be over NZ$7k worth of kit! So yeah, there's that.

If you can afford it, and if you need it, then absolutely go for it. If I was doing this for a living it would be a no-brainer.

And for the rest of us mere mortals? Well, there's always the pre-focusing technique. Which does work. It just requires a lot more computer time in order to find the 'keepers' from the rest. 

Oh well. I'd better get back to post-processing then, I guess?

2016 Greymouth Street Races

I love the Greymouth Street Racing event held here every year at Labour weekend. I look forward to it every year - and this year was no exception. It looked good in terms of the weather (slightly overcast but no hint of rain), and my previous experience using the E-M5 MkII had me excited for more.

Go-Kart action. Olympus OM-D E-M5 MkII with Zuiko 40-150mm f4/5.6

It turned out to be a strange sort of a year this year though, and I came away feeling a little frustrated. First there was an horrific accident in the very first race of the day, that sadly resulted in the death of one of the riders. It is the first fatal crash the event has had in its 27 year history, and almost ended the day before it had begun. Racing did resume, however, at 2.00pm in the afternoon (a delay of about four hours).

F1 Rider No.121. Greymouth Street Races. Olympus OM-D E-M5 MkII with Zuiko 40-150mm f4/5.6

This meant that a whole days racing was now cut down to only a few hours. Understandable given the circumstances, but disappointing none-the-less. Maybe this sudden urgency made me loose my focus, or maybe it just wasn't a good year, but whatever the reason, I found myself constantly at the wrong places at the wrong times - not getting the shots I wanted.

Motorcross Rider 450, Greymouth Street Races. OM-D E-M5 MkII with Zuiko 40-150mm 

Because I had some time on my hands before racing got underway in the afternoon, I decided to walk around the whole track and see if there were some vantage points I could use to give me different photos than previous years. It turns out that there isn't, but unfortunately racing had gotten underway again and I was stuck in a section of the track that had no decent photo opportunities! There are several crossing areas spaced around the track for people to change sides every now and again, but because they were trying to get through the races quickly, I was stuck there for almost an hour before I was allowed to cross over to an area I actually wanted to shoot from! And this turned out to be the story of my day.

Catch me if you can.... Greymouth Street Races 2016. OM-D E-M5 MkII with Zuiko 40-150mm f4/5.6

There are two or three areas on the track where the riders come around a bend at a low angle and pick up speed, and these are the areas I try to concentrate on. I focus on the bend, switch the camera to manual focus, and take a burst of images as the bikes reach the area of focus. I use a fast shutter speed to stop the action, and although this can reduce the sense of motion and speed in the image, I think it's made up for somewhat by the exaggerated angles that the riders achieve. There is still a lot of drama in the composition, and that's what I'm after.

Ahead of the pack. Greymouth Street Races, OM-D E-M5 MkII with Zuiko 40-150mm f4/5.6

I try to get as 'clean' and as uncluttered a composition as I can, which isn't easy given the number of people at the event. Sometimes feet, legs or bodies in the background can't be avoided - but I do try to whenever possible. And a little cloning later on never hurt anyone :-)

This year, I also decided that the images actually worked better in black and white. I've never converted my street racing images to black and white before, so this was a new twist this year. I converted them in Photoshop, using the high contrast red filter setting, and dialed it back just a touch if needed. This gave me punchy, high contrast images that I like - finished off with what I hope is a subtle vignette to frame the action in the center of the image.

Total concentration. Greymouth Street Race, 2016. OM-D E-M5 MkII with Zuiko 40-150mm f4/5.6

Next year I'm hoping to have the use of a Zuiko 75-300mm f4.8/6.7 - either by getting one earlier, or renting one for the weekend. I'd like the 600mm reach for sports and wildlife anyway, so it would be the perfect lens for the street races. Josh has also expressed an interest in this lens - so maybe we could go halves and get it together?  That would be pretty cool....

Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6R lens review

If you were to ask me what ‘sort’ of photographer I am, I would probably say a landscape photographer first and foremost, with wedding photographer on the side. I don’t tend to shoot a lot of subjects that require a telephoto lens in the way that a bird or wildlife photographer would.

What I do shoot occasionally though, is sports. And in particular motorcycle street racing – with a little bit of kids’ sports activities thrown in for good measure. I love capturing street racing (see my last post), so a telephoto lens is a must-have for those few times that I really need it.

I can’t justify spending thousands of dollars on a lens that I’m only going to us a few times year. This usually means that I end up spending the least amount of money I can get away with on a telephoto lens for any system I own. Enter the Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6 R.

Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6 in two flavors

This is the cheapo kit lens that comes bundled with many of the ‘consumer’ grade Olympus cameras like the Pens, so you can’t really expect much performance or quality wise. It retails here in New Zealand at just over $400NZ new, but I got mine as an ex-demo unit (from a camera retail store) for $250NZ with full warranty.

It’s an all-plastic construction, although the lenses are glass, with one ED and one HR element to help with lens corrections. Despite this, there is still a small amount of purple fringing that can occur wide open in high contrast areas, but this is a fairly easy fix with software. The lens also features an MSC focusing mechanism (Movies & Still Compatible), which means it’s very quiet when focusing. Finally, it weighs just 6.7oz (189 grams), making it an incredibly easy zoom to carry around all day – especially considering it has the same reach as a traditional 80-300mm lens on a film camera!

U15s West Coast Soccer Rep. Olympus 40-150mm

I had used the lens a couple of times to take photos of my son playing soccer. This isn’t a particularly fast-moving sport, so the autofocus motor in the lens kept up reasonably well with the action. It’s not the fastest focusing lens out there, but neither is it horrible. Adequate would be an appropriate adjective.

Recently, however, I had a chance to put the image quality of this lens to the real test, using it exclusively to shoot motorcycle street racing. I didn’t stress the autofocus capabilities of the lens though, deciding instead to focus manually on a specific point and shoot as the action moved into that zone (again, see my last post).

In previous years I have used Canon gear and have been lucky enough to borrow some ‘L’ glass. Last year I shot with the Canon 400mm f5.6L, and in previous years I have used the Canon 70-200mm f4L. So the Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6 was up against some pretty prestigious ‘pro’ quality glass. Not a very fair fight you would say.

Greymouth Street Racing, 2015. Olympus 40-150mm @ f5.6

And you’d be wrong J Long story short, I was blown away with the sharpness and quality of the images I got from this tiny, cheap, plastic, consumer lens. The images it produces are way better than they have any right to be, and astoundingly stand up to the Canon pro glass I’ve used in the past. At a quarter of the price and a tenth of the weight!

Manual focus with the lens was smooth and accurate, helped by the magnification and focus-peaking function of the Olympus O-MD E-M5 Mk2. As soon as you start turning the front focusing ring and the camera is set to manual focus, the image in the viewfinder is magnified x10 and white lines appear around anything that is in focus. A quick tap on the shutter button and you are back to full screen again in the viewfinder and the camera is manually focused. Couldn’t be easier.

'121'. Olympus OM-D E-M5 MkII and Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6. At 150mm, f5.6 @ 1/4000th

Almost all the images I took were at the 150mm limit, wide open at f5.6 – so probably not the most ‘optimal’ setting for sharpness. And yet these are probably the sharpest files I’ve ever got from the street racing – against the Canon 400 f5.6L and 70-200 f4L! Some of that ‘may’ be due to the larger depth of field you get from micro four thirds (where f5.6 is effectively f11 in terms of depth of field). Although having said that, after reviewing the images, there is still a relatively narrow area of in-focus to out-of-focus images. When the focus was ‘in’, as it often was, the images were tack sharp. A very impressive performance for such a cheap consumer-grade lens.

'Droid'. OM-D E-M5 MkII and Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6. 150mm at f5.6 @1/2000th

On a bright and sunny day, with high contrast subjects, the ED and HR elements were proving their worth. The camera itself will correct some of the lenses flaws, but even so, the jpegs straight out of camera were clean and sharp under harsh conditions.

Would I like to shoot with the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 pro lens instead? Of course. Would it have made a huge difference to the images? Maybe. Did I get some fantastic images out of the 40-150mm f4-5.6? Absolutely. In fact, I’m thrilled with the shots I was able to get from the day shooting motor sport exclusively with the OM-D E-M5 MkII and 40-150mm f4-5.6. No monopod required. No back-breaking gear to carry around all day. Just great images.

Street Racing Action. OM-D E-M5 MkII and Olympus 40-150mm

For the price, you really can’t go wrong if you need a telephoto lens for occasional use.

4 out of 5 stars.